


Grounded

by stayseated



Series: Departure/Arrival [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:47:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 56,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14414049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stayseated/pseuds/stayseated
Summary: Will Grey ever love Missandei again? Will Missandei end up staying? Will Yara ever have a healthy relationship? Will Drogo ever stop calling Dany racist? Will Dany ever stop calling Drogo stupid? Is Jaime going to ruin his friends' business? (Sequel to Arrival)





	1. Jaime gets a new job

 

 

 

As usual, when he gets there at seven in the morning, he’s the one opening up the joint. He’s alone for the first hour, so that’s when he forces himself to answer emails so that he can later ignore his emails for the rest of the day with relatively few consequences.

When she arrives, she does what she usually does. She’s very quiet because she’s always afraid of disturbing him from whatever deep-thinking he's totally _not_ doing. She sometimes steps out of her heels to walk barefoot around the office in the morning, so that her clicking steps don’t break his concentration. It took him entirely too long to notice that she does this. He learned about it because one time after work, in bed back when they were just sleeping together, he looked at the soles of her feet and noticed they were really fucking dirty. And he almost blurted out that she should really wash her feet before she crawled into bed with him. Like, his sheets are white. It’s only polite.

But he managed to figure out why her feet were dirty before that awesome little nugget spilled from his lips.

He gets up from his computer when he hears her quietly puttering around in the break room. She’s barefoot and stooping down a little bit to make sure the coffee is actually going into her cup and not the floor. He asks himself what they are — what is he supposed to call a person like her in his life? They are too familiar with each other to simply be dating. They are nowhere near intimate enough to be partners in life again. The situation is unique and weird, which, he supposes, is rather normal for them.

He softly says, “Hey.”

She looks up. She smiles at him, flashing him a row of white teeth. She is also flashing him cleavage because she’s bent over her coffee cup. A lot of the bravado he had at the beginning has dissipated. His heart generally pounds in nervousness around her now.

“Hey,” she says. “How are you? How was your night?”

“I’m good. It was good.”

 

 

  
Leading up to this, Grey told Jaime to try and take the farce seriously — and Jaime apparently took the words to heart because Jaime shows up to the office in a _really nice_ suit and has copies of his resume in a leather-bound notebook, tucked under his arm.

Like, Missy usually does not go for Jaime or Jaime’s type or Jaime’s entire schtick — so it’s completely bizarre that she cannot look directly at him without giggling nervously like a complete girl. Her high-pitched feminine tittering actually shocks Drogo into shooting her an incredulous stare.

Drogo says, “What is happening here?”

Missandei is covering her hot face with her hand. She says, “I _don’t know._ Jaime, you just look so handsome. You look so expensive and powerful. Like, I don’t think I have ever seen you go full-force white male before. It’s breaking my brain.” She peeks at Jaime from in between her fingers — and then her body starts helplessly shaking in new giggles. She squeaks out, “I don’t know why I’m responding like this.”

Jaime looks kind of bewildered and stunned — and he is also casting these careful glances at Grey, who is standing _right there._ Jaime says, “Thanks, hon. I feel flattered. And deeply uncomfortable. Grey, can you back up a little? I can feel your body heat.”

Grey is literally standing a healthy distance away from Jaime. Grey is literally doing nothing and thinking nothing, as Missandei keeps giggling and as Jaime keeps swallowing down his own spit. Grey is not jealous. Because it is Jaime.

Drogo is actually kind of offended? Because he’s probably hotter than Jaime — maybe not more beautiful. But he’s definitely more masculine and more sexual and just _hotter._ And Missy has _never_ responded to him like this. Like, she’s seen Drogo in a tux many times. And she _never_ responded like this. It’s because Jaime is white. And that is fucked up. Internalized racism is fucked up.

Missandei thinks she’s losing her mind because she has been so used to seeing Jaime as a turd that occasionally bosses her around and occasionally talks down to her because he thinks it’s so hilarious. Jaime has always just been another male idiot in her life. But today might be the first time she is seeing Jaime the Celebrity. Like, he is _really groomed._ This is similar to the awe that she sometimes feel when Dany gets completely made up, cinched up, dolled up, and just dripping in classy and understated jewelry that cost more than multiple years of Missandei’s salary.

 

 

  
The kids look like they do not even what to do with a printed resume. They all have copies of Jaime’s resume on their devices. Pyp holds the thick-weighted linen sheet like it’s a bomb. Pyp has Jaime wait in their waiting area — and then realizes that they actually have no waiting area and no spare chairs — so Pyp just has Jaime stand around while Pyp gathers the rest of the staff in the conference room.

Missandei, finally over her giggles, gives Jaime a smile and also a light pat on the chest. She says, “Are you nervous?”

“Oh my God,” Jaime mutters. “The crazy thing is that I’m sort of nervous.”

“Well, don’t be nervous,” Grey says. “You’ll be talking to children who went to art school. They didn’t go to real school. They don’t know math or science or . . . even how to read half the time.”

Drogo chuckles at that, rubbing at the light stubble on his jaw. He says, “You’re so mean sometimes. I fucking love it.”

“See, that’s the problem,” Jaime says. He holds up his prosthesis. “Children are the kind of people that point at my hand in restaurants and loudly ask their parent, ‘Hey, Mom. Why does that man have a robot hand?’ And then the mom tries to make it a teachable moment, even though she knows _nothing_ about the technology. And I’m left standing there, trying not to punch a woman and her fucking child in the face.”

 

 

  
Grey, Drogo, and Missandei are allowed to attend the job interview — and when Meera told Grey this, he was like, say what now? — but the catch is that they cannot take over and commandeer it. They can only watch.

Grey looks down at his paper copy of Jaime’s resume, and he knows that Jaime wrote this out specifically for this interview. Because Jaime has actually never had to apply to a job in his entire life. He got all of his work experiences through connections, which then built on themselves.

So he has to watch and listen as a bunch of 101-level questions get tossed at Jaime. Like, they ask Jaime to name a challenge he faced in work and what he did to overcome it.

Jaime doesn’t even need to think. He knows that he could cater to his audience by talking about challenging filming conditions he has faced or about some sort of creative challenge — like the widescreen format of the Valyria episode — but he decides to flex his competence by telling them about his father’s company suffering a two-year decline and an inability to create value for shareholders. The solution involved a deep dive into company culture, structure, management, and strategic vision in order to pull out an objective understanding of the state of the company. Then the leadership vetted and hired consultants to help them redefine the strategic focus — where to pay, where to play, which markets to avoid, which to invest in. A lot of business units were divested under the new strategic focus. There was also restructuring to reduce operations cost and complexity.

The kids have no freaking clue what Jaime is talking about — and it’s very obvious to everyone in the room.

“In year five — this last year — the company’s margin increased by a weighted average of about 50 percent since decline,” Jaime says. “Our share price has jumped 83 percent.”

“Ohhh, interesting,” Pyp says. “That’s cool. Good for you.”

 

 

  
Grey knows that he has promised not to butt in, but what he is watching is real dumb. So he says, “Guys, I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to interrupt, but what is going on is real dumb and a waste of time. Jaime — tell them what you think you can do here. Tell them your ideas. And the rest of you guys — tell Jaime your concerns. Ask him about his communication or working style.”

“Grey!” Meera hisses. “We were going to get there!”

He holds his hands up. He says, “Sorry.”

 

 

  
Jaime says that he has to spend more time looking at how they work, but Grey has shown him the numbers and generally, and things look really good. Probably the first thing Jaime would do is pore over their statements of work and tighten those up. He’d also come up with a formal process for proposals and bids, because right now, it’s really loose and ephemeral. It’s a lot of guessing — and this is not on the creative staff. This is actually a leadership issue — so this is actually on Grey and Drogo. They are putting out best guesses instead of well-researched bids. That is because of their limited bandwidth and also just lack of experience and expertise. A lot of the time, the actual bid is generally fine — but the project scope is not. Grey and Drogo are not upselling very much, if at all. They are not always selling work holistically. They tend to sell piecemeal, attacking work based on what is said, rather than what hasn’t been communicated.

It is so novel and insane for the staff to hear someone criticize Drogo and Grey so transparently like this. The young staff members are leaning forward and listening avidly — as Jaime completely wins them over. He actually started talking about this on purpose, to win them over. Where Grey’s ability to change his personality is pretty much nonexistent and Drogo’s ability to charm is innate and not targeted, a thing about Jaime that is often unseen and thus, undetected, is that he has a really great ability to read people and then adjust on the spot in a calculated way.

 

 

  
When it comes time for Jaime to ask questions of them, Jaime starts by just asking about the day-to-day routine and work. It’s a soft question for the creative staff to answer. After that, Jaime asks his real questions — and mostly to Grey because Jaime knows Drogo generally defers to Grey on these matters. Jaime asks if they have revenue projections for the next few years. He asks about sales goals. He asks about what budget he’d get. He asks about marketing and PR spends. He basically wants to know just how controlling Grey is going to be — if he’s just going to be here to calm Grey down while nothing changes — or if he will actually get to make changes that he thinks will be solid. Jaime knows that he sometimes has personality issues with Drogo — and he has to change the way he talks to Missandei — but his biggest obstacle in work will clearly be Grey.

These are not questions that he will get an adequate answer to today. These are questions that will start to be answered in the three-month trial period.

 

 

  
Jaime gets shooed out of the conference room and is hanging by himself in the main office space as the rest of the staff talks about him in the conference room.

Jojen says, “I like him. I think we should hire him. I have a good feeling about the outcomes of this.”

Grey rolls his eyes. He says, “Oh, do you think so, Jo-jo? You have a good feeling about the future? Oh, swell.”

Missandei swats Grey’s chest with the back of her hand. She softly says, “Stop.” She means that he needs to stop being such a dick and start letting the staff go through this at their own pace.

“He’s like, really smart,” Lommy says. “And he’s not like us. He’s like, business-minded. I think we need that.”

Grey has to laugh out loud — so he doesn’t flip out. Because this is actually shit he knew like, _a million years ago._ And he has to fucking sit here like a prisoner and listen to his staff gradually tiptoe up to shit that he already knew a fucking million years ago.

 

 

  
Pyp gets to be the one to excitedly tell Jaime, “You’re hired!”

And Jaime masterfully looks pleasantly surprised. He says, “Oh! That’s good news!”

Grey shoots Jaime a look, and Jaime chuckles quietly to himself.

 

 

  
They all end up going out for after-work drinks on the company’s dime. Drogo offers it up and calls it a team-building activity. It’s a chance for the staff to socialize with Jaime and get to know him and bond with him before he starts fucking terrorizing them and making them hate their lives.

The entire thing becomes a little bit muddled when Yara and Theon show up. They show up because Yara texted Drogo to ask him where he and Grey are at. When she learned that their business was fronting drinks, she quickly invited herself to the festivities. Drogo texted her back and told her that she doesn’t fucking work for them — but that does not deter her whatsoever.

When Yara shows up, Grey says, “Oh my God, no,” out loud because he didn’t expect her. Because Yara has this terrible habit of making him look human — that is, like an idiot.

She rocks her head to the music overhead and huskily says, “Baby bear,” before she wraps her arm around his shoulders from behind and gives him a kiss on the cheek.

The kids’ jaws collectively drop. Because it’s already been enough of a mindfuck to wrap their brains around the fact that Grey is capable enough to score a smokeshow like Missandei — and he apparently has sex with her! — but then there’s the idea that Grey actually has a friend — who is female! Who looks like a cool female! The fact that Grey doesn’t just boot down and plug himself into an outlet at the end of each day — it is _crazy!_

 

 

  
Theon just got his driver’s license again — so he is driving. Because Yara has a designated driver, and it’s Friday night — and the drinks are free for her — and her personal life is still in shambles! — she gets absolutely hammered.

Grey tries to get his young staff members to go home. He tells them that he knows that hanging out with old people is the pits and they probably have awesome Friday night plans — at like — the club? So go.

They tell him that they really do not have plans . . . at the club. They actually don’t really like to dance because dancing makes them feel self-conscious. They also tell him that he is actually not even that old. He’s not old at all.

Yara cackles evilly and sucks down another smoky sip of her drink before she audibly exhales and shivers — because it’s _so good._ She licks her lips and sways in her seat as she points to Drogo, Jaime, and Grey. She says, “Hey, let’s play a game. Grey, if there was gun held to Jaime and Drogo’s heads, who would you choose to save and why?”

“Oh my God,” Jaime says in wonderment — because he already knows he has lost. “You are the fucking shittiest,” he says to Yara.

 

 

  
Yara turns the game around on the kids and she makes them start choosing who they will let die and who they will save. Meera would save Jojen over Pyp. Pyp would save Lommy over Jojen — even though Pyp and Jojen are really good friends and there is depth to their friendship, but Lommy just makes him laugh. That makes Jojen kind of upset because he cannot believe that superficial amusement trumps a deep and emotional friendship.

“Hey,” Yara says. “I got a really good one for Grey. Missy or Drogo? Who will you let die and who will you fucking save?”

 

 

  
Missandei is laughing, rocking into Yara and holding onto Yara’s arm. Yara takes the opportunity to raise her arm up and cradle Missy to her body in a side-hug. Drogo is grinning and has his arms crossed over his chest. He’s slouching _a lot,_ and he’s staring at Grey.

Grey says, “I ain’t picking. I’m not stupid. You can both die.”

Drogo snorts, and he says, “You _are_ stupid. Because you should know that you _always_ pick the girl.”

 

 

  
They stay out entirely way too late. It’s past midnight by the time the night starts to peter out. The tab is outrageous, and Drogo happily pays it because it’s good to do this kind of thing once in a while.

As people who typically go to bed before eleven o’clock, Grey and Missandei have been yawning, to the point where tears bloom in their eyes from the strain of pushing back exhaustion.

He has to say goodbye to her in front of everyone. She has an early morning get-together with one of her friends, so she bows out right after the clock strikes twelve. Drogo makes a really lame Cinderella joke, which Missandei does not immediately get, so she tells him, “No. Pumpkin? _What?”_ And then she sighs and just hikes the strap of her purse over her shoulder before she leans over to kiss him.

They have locked into a routine when it comes to goodbyes, so Drogo automatically offers her his cheek. He softly pats her face as she kisses him and says, “That’s a good girl.”

She scowls tiredly and says, “You’re gross.”

She goes about the same ol’ routine. She goes around the entire table hugging everyone briefly — until she gets to Grey. When she gets to him, she grabs onto his shoulder and gives it a firm little shake before she says, “I’ll talk to you later.”

He says, “Yup.”

 

 

  
To her, slow has been the operative word. She’s been taking it really slowly and carefully because she does not want to spook him with the full force of how she feels about him. She’s been taking his lead because she doesn’t want to push him. She does not want for him to freak out on her because she is haplessly smothering him. She has been spending unsatisfying nights by herself in bed.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Date night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It can be hard dating someone that you've already been in love with!

 

 

They have a date night on Saturday. Only she calls it that, though — and only in her head. Out loud, they are just getting dinner together. He leaves it up to her to pick the place, and she ends up picking a restaurant that is a little bit fancier than what they usually go for.

She does this because she wants to dress up a little bit. She’s seen Grey go full-tux for his semi-regular hangout sessions with Dany, so she thinks it’s okay if she makes him go to a nice restaurant. In their previous relationship, they were constantly exhausted by their travel schedule that all they did on their downtime was play it low-key, sequestering themselves in one another’s homes. Also in their previous lives, the disposable income wasn’t what it currently is — so they were kind of judicious and pragmatic with how much they spent on food.

All of her going out dresses — all three of them — kind of double as dresses she wears to weddings and they are also hopelessly outdated and look cheap. Not like, hoochie-cheap, but actually inexpensively cheap.

She goes shopping with Yara who, upon learning what the dress is for — for Missandei to get laid — guides Missy away from dresses that can double as work dresses because that’s not the point.

“Whoa, boobs,” Missy says, as she looks at herself in the mirror in the dressing room, as Yara finishes zipping her up. The dress shows a lot of side-boob. And also a lot of inside-boob. Just a lot of boob. It’s classy boob, though. She looks at Yara’s face in the mirror. She comically says, “I’m ready to meet his parents now!”

With a straight face, Yara says, “His parents are dead. So you’re good.”

“I’m not supposed to wear a bra with this, right? No, obviously not. Would I need boob tape for this? Also — what is boob tape? Is it special tape? Is the tape to hold the fabric in place, or is it to make sure I don’t nip out? Oh my God, I can’t wear this. I’m going to be slouching and holding my napkin in front of my chest all night. And it’s going to be super sexy when he takes off my clothes and finds a lot of boob tape.”

“You know what’s actually great boob tape?” Yara says, completely ignoring Missy’s neuroses. “Gaffer tape. I bet when you get naked and he sees the wall of gaffer you’ve needlessly plastered to yourself, his dick will spring right up because he’ll be so turned on by your ingenuity.”

“Yeah, that’s a thing that happens to me a lot,” Missy says in a deadpan. “Turning men on by how clever I am.” Missy starts laughing in nervousness, as her hands come up to cover her own breasts. Her laugh comes out in staccato stutters, as she says, “Oh my God, I’ve been sexually harrassed so much that I’m so uncomfortable with overt sexuality! Oh my God, what if I do this all night!”

“I think this is really funny coming from a woman who _only_ has naked photos of herself on her Instagram.”

 

 

  
Missy tries to buy a dress with a more modest neckline, but Yara like, wrestles her to the ground and steals her wallet like a mugger. So Missy ends up buying the sexy boob dress. And then it generally sits on the door handle of her closet and haunts her for a few days. In those days, he keeps catching her staring at him at work, and he keeps looking at her all dumbfounded, because he soon figured out that there’s nothing on his face — no food, no booger — so she is staring just to fuck with him. And of course his mind goes there. But she’s not so much staring to fuck with him as much as she just wants to be fucked by him. But voicing such a want in the office is so inappropriate. And it might also be sexual harassment.

Over text message, she tells them where they are going — to a fancy restaurant with relatively small portion sizes. She is explicit because he asked her to be. She tells him that it’s possible that he needs to pre-eat before he eats for real. Because she’s paying for dinner, but also, he eats a lot. And she doesn’t want to pay a thick stack just to satiate him. That will come later. And it won’t involve money.

She actually doesn’t say the latter bit. The sex part. She’s awkward about sexting because it’s weird to just start doing that at the tail end of a long chain of messages that amount to, “Hey, when you get here, go straight up the stairs and turn right. We’re at the windows in a booth.” She’s also awkward with sexting because she’s too self-conscious. They are in that fun period at the beginning of a relationship where they just don’t where the other stands! She doesn’t even know how much he likes her! Because he never indicates it to her! It’s great!

Over text message, she also tells him that he should dress up a little bit. Don’t wear jeans, maybe wear slacks. Don’t wear a t-shirt. Maybe wear a button up. Maybe also wear a jacket.

Her mind pretty much goes _acccck!_ as she rereads the messages back to herself because they sound so bossy and naggy and unsexy. But he respond back and says: _Cool._

 

 

  
She actually picks him up because his apartment is closer to the restaurant, and she also wants to be chivalrous and subvert gender norms. He doesn’t really get it because he does not even give her a look of vague amusement when she holds open the door for him, as they exit the lobby of his building.

He looks totally yummy. He looks just awesome. He listened and dressed up. He smells really clean. Like he used soap. All over his body. It’s great. It’s gonna be great. She can’t believe they’re together! It’s still a real trip.

He does a double-take when he sees her dress, but otherwise does not comment on it.

 

 

  
Dinner is tragically awkward because they have already exhausted probably all conversation topics that they can possible have. She doesn’t want to talk about work — so she asks him to not talk about work. This results in long silences that they try to fill in with eating. The food is actually great — she agonized and researched to death because he is really judgemental when it comes to food. He reads pretension in everything that aspires to be more than where it started — and it’s kind of funny — because he is _super fucking pretentious._ That is like, one of his stand-out qualities.

But she chose a restaurant that is nose to tail, because that’s the kind of stuff he likes — pig snout and trotters and entrails. She had to pore over the menu of many restaurants, to ensure that they do not have any of his food rant triggers — like nothing truffled, and no riffs on burgers or mac and cheese. He has these specific kinds of comfort foods that he cannot stand being elevated, and he will go on long diatribes about how fucking burgers can cost an arm and a leg just because they have some stupid bullshit on them, but he _still cannot_ get a decent soup made of like, anal glands because white people love burgers and _everyone is racist._ She loves his diatribes, but maybe not when she’s trying to have a nice, semi-romantic dinner with him.

“Do you want a bite of this?” she points to her duck. She actually ordered it because he loves duck. He especially loves duck that has been preserved in fat.

“Yeah, man,” he says, lifting up his own plate and holding it out to her. He intends for them to switch dishes for a bit. “Bring it over here.”

She really loves that he’s calling her man, like she’s his bro, like she’s his buddy — while she’s wearing a really sexy dress, after the hours of primping she did to make herself look like this.

 

 

  
After dinner, after one round of drinks before he starts yawning because he is bored — because she is fucking boring him to fucking death with all her attempts at conversation — she decides to just call it a night. She drives them back to his place and she primes him for sex by telling him that they are going to have sex.

It is kind of a joke — something to jumpstart some chemistry. He is weirdly blase about it though. He says, “Okay,” as he pushes himself out of her car.

Sometimes she looks into his face, and she thinks that it looks completely the same. He looks like the exact same person she used to know — but that guy used to look at her adoringly and that guy used to breathlessly confess to her that he missed her so much — even when they weren’t apart for very long. That guy used to be a lot more considerate, and he used to be full of small gestures that compounded and made her feel like she was loved.

She keeps having talks with herself. She keeps telling herself what love actually is — and she keeps throwing the word unconditional around. Her love for him is unconditional, and while it can be hard to love someone who currently does not have the capability of reciprocating fully — while it can be hard to love someone who is difficult — she’s not in this to be reassured or to get her ego stroked. She’s in this because he is worth it, and she wants to be with him. It might be a chore to constantly shove out old expectations and these old, heartstopping memories — in order to redefine her expectations of him. But this is probably the nature of this kind of love.

She starts kissing him once the door to his apartment closes. He smells beautiful. He holds onto her jaw as he kisses her back, as his hard body presses tightly against hers. She tries to be sexy and coy, as she pulls his hand to her body, in between her legs. She whispers to him, “Do you like the dress? I got it for you.”

He licks his lips. He simply says, “I like the dress.” He kind of huffs out a short laugh as his hand skims up and down the inside of her thigh, causing these goosebumps to rip over her skin.

She feels his fingertip and his knuckle skimming the fabric of her underwear — damp and warm as it currently is — and her breathing hitches. She says, “Babe —” just as his other hand dips into her dress — sliding underneath the fabric at the bust.

He freezes. He says, “What the fuck?” He extracts the hand from in between her legs so that he can use it to pull back the material of her dress. He exposes her left breast, sees the tape, and is like, “Whoa. You taped yourself?”

Her face feels hot. Because she’s a little embarrassed and feels a little put on the spot. But she pushes forward anyway. She says, “I didn’t want to have a wardrobe malfunction at dinner. Also, my boobs needed a lift, some support.”

“Well, see — this is why this sort of dress is impractical.”

“It’s not impractical. And I thought you like it.”

“I honestly do not care what you wear.”

So he lied when he said he liked it. That’s cool. She’s not going to comment on that because she does not want to fight right now. She says, “Oh, okay,” and she generally stands there dumbly, being the kind of woman that she sort of disparages. She is currently the kind of woman that really wants her man to tell her that he thinks she’s beautiful. She is currently not the kind of woman that can explicitly solicit compliments — because it would negate the effect of the compliment and also, he resents having to give compliments.

 

 

  
He can tell that this night is totally going sideways, and it’s probably mostly his fault. He can see that she is standing there, kind of miserable, with her breast still taped up, yet exposed — and it looks weird. He fixes her, pulling the material of her dress back over her boob so it’s covering her properly again. And then he pulls her over to his couch and sits down on it, trying to pull her onto her lap.

It’s entirely not sexy. It’s awkward because her dress is tight and there’s a slit in it that she has to work around. This is kind of why he is not crazy about the dress. There are a few unnecessary things about it — design-wise.

To avoid tearing her dress at the slit, she just turns around and gestures for him to take it off — to unzip it for her — which he does. He reaches up and pulls down the zipper enough for her to grasp onto it and pull it all the way down. She also steps out of her shoes and loses a few inches. She steps out of her dress and carefully lays it on the arm of her couch.

He’s a fan of her panties — because it’s stretchy and it’s also barely underwear. It’s a thong so that her dress didn’t reveal any lines. And he’s about to tell her that there’s actually one thing she is wearing that he really likes when she turns around.

And then he laughs. Because she looks so fucking ridiculous all taped up.

She tiredly drops down onto his lap and says, “Grey — definitely laugh at me. See where that gets you.”

“You’re basically naked and sitting in my lap,” he says, trying to pick at a corner of the tape over her breast. “I think I’ll be okay.” He starts to gently pull at the tape, pulling her skin taut along with it. It makes him grimace. He says, “Does it hurt?”

“Not yet,” she says, looking down and watching him pull the tape off. “I can’t wait ‘til you get to nipple though. That’s gonna be a doozy.”

“Missandei.”

“What?”

“You don’t have to dress any particular way for me. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“I like the dress though.”

“Then keep wearing the dress. But don’t say it’s for me.”

“Okay,” she says softly.

 

 

  
Taking off the tape is taking a while, and jokingly he tells her that maybe he should just rip it off like a bandaid. She cannot tell that he’s joking at first, so she looks panicked and knocks his hands off her breasts and says, “No!” which makes him laugh.

It takes probably ten minutes of careful work to get the tape all the way off. There are oblong marks from where the tape was, so he goes off to find some lotion before coming back to the couch to slather the stuff on her. She grabs the bottle and squints, trying to read the label in the dark — in the mood lighting. She discovers it’s really fancy lotion, and she asks him why he uses such fancy lotion to jack off to.

It’s a joke — it’s a dirty joke — she’s not sure if it’s okay.

But he rolls with it. He tells her he uses fancy lotion to jack off to because it doesn’t irritate his skin. Sometimes fragrance and additives make him break out into hives.

There’s still a tinge of awkwardness to everything — even in their banter. She likes that she led him to talking about hives in the course of sexy talk. She is really nailing this shit.

Her self-consciousness starts to fall away as his moisturized hands start rubbing lotion into her breasts. Her mouth starts hanging open as her breathing gets wanton and her underwear becoming a sopping mess and she starts unconsciously grinding down on him to get a little bit of relief. She thinks that he is so fucking hot.

He mutters, “Oh my God, this is going to taste gross.”

Which makes her blearily go, “What?”

And then he lifts her a little bit with his hands under her ass. He plants his wet, hot mouth on her chest, sucking lightly on her skin. His hands guide her over his erection before he drops her down on it, before he presses her down and grinds up against her.

She cries out and gasps, and yep. This is probably why. This is probably why she puts up with everything — with the lack of affection and the lack of verbalization. And sometimes the apparently disinterest and apathy. This is why. It’s because of this shit.

He lightly bites down on her nipple as she starts to stupidly try to fuck him with his pants still on. She says, “Oh my God, we’re going to fuck.”

That makes him laugh, his hot breath flowing over her fevered skin. He says, “Oh, okay, spoiler.”

“How does it taste?”

“Bitter,” he says.

“You’re a champ,” she says, as her hands shoves in between them, undoing his pants. She then digs around for his wallet. He doesn't ask if she’s trying to take some money — but he wonders for a second. She actually pulls out a condom and says, “I can’t wait. I don’t want to wait.”

She extracts him. He assumes she’s going to stand up to take off her underwear. She doesn’t. The material is stretchy. So she just rolls the condom on him and uses his dick to actually move her underwear out of the way before she sinks down on him — and it yanks out this loud groan from him. He was right. Her underwear is great.

 

 

  
She asks him if she can sleep over. Sometimes it feels like asking a teacher permission to go use the toilet. It makes her feel vulnerable and also kind of like she is under the thumb of a megalomaniac.

He pauses — apparently thinking it over. And it’s only because he has breakfast plans with Theon, and he cannot cancel on Theon. That is why he pauses.

But she manages to get completely psyched out by the pause. She says, “I mean, I don’t have to. I can totally go home and give you some space. I know that we’re spending some of tomorrow with my family anyway, so it’s probably going to be a lot of me time for you.”

“No no,” he says. “It’s fine. Stay over. It’s just — I have to rush out early. So I can’t like — hang with you during the day.”

“Oh,” she says. “That’s totally fine. I will just show myself out.”

“Like, you can hang out here by yourself, if you want to,” he says, now also a little nervous and anxious. “You don’t like, have to leave right when I leave.”

“Okay, that’s cool. I’ll just play it by ear.”

 

 

  
There’s not much at his place that signals he is prepared for her. There’s the spare toothbrush that he keeps pretty segregated from his electric toothbrush. He keeps her toothbrush in a drawer — and she was actually the one who brought that toothbrush over. He didn’t like, get it for her. And he probably keeps it in a drawer for aesthetics.

None of her stuff is here — she has to wash her face off with water and just a little bit of soap. It’s drying — and she _really_ soils his towel with eyeliner, mascara, and remnants of her lipstick and foundation. He’s going to probably need to Oxiclean or bleach this.

 

 

  
She has nothing to wear to bed — so she has to ask him if she can borrow some clothes to wear. The constant permission-seeking is actually getting to her — and she just feels small and dumb and silly as she avidly watches his face for the things that he isn’t verbally communicating to her.

He gets up to grab some clothes for her to sleep in.

 

 

  
She says good night to him by kissing him on the lips and saying to him, “Good night, babe. I love you.”

He says, “Night, Missandei.”

 

 

 


	3. Grey is getting fat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone in Grey's life has noticed that he is not as cute as he used to be. Missandei is so in love with him that she is pretty okay with it.

 

 

 

Grey has to get up early because Theon doesn’t like crowds — which is something Grey sympathizes with, though Theon’s problem is that he doesn’t want people to watch him walk, and he doesn’t want to be jostled in crowds. Grey’s problem these days is purely psychological and possibly made up and imagined — or so he tells himself.

He wakes up to an alarm and rolls right over to shut it off right away so that it doesn’t wake her up.

However, she is a fairly light sleeper. She groans a little bit in her sleep, and she murmurs his name.

 

 

  
It’s so early that it’s still semi-dark out. The sun hasn’t risen very high. He dresses himself quickly and quietly. She has fallen back asleep after he told her to. He hops around trying to put on his sock as he brushes his teeth at the same time.

He has to dig in his utility drawer in the kitchen to pull out his last spare key. Drogo has a copy, as does Yara for when she needs to come by and water his plants or grab his mail when he is working in the Summer Isles. Missandei needs a key today, otherwise she will not be able to lock his deadbolt, and it’ll be her fault if he gets burgled.

He runs his hand over her forehead, brushing her hair off her face. He bends down to kiss her smooth skin. He kisses her over her brow and then he kisses her squishy warm cheek — and then he kisses her soft lips.

This wakes her up a little bit. She repeats his name out loud. She says, “Grey?”

“I’m heading out,” he explains.

“Oh,” she says softly, blinking up at him. Her arm raises up to grab at his hand, squeezing it. “Okay, babe. Have a fun time with Theon.”

“I’m leaving a key for you right here on the nightstand,” he says. “Please lock up behind you after you leave, okay? Also, I’m going to need this back. It’s my last spare.” Also, he is not really comfortable giving her a key to his home. They’ve been together for less than a whopping week. They’ve been together for about five days. Only a nutjob would give a woman the keys to his apartment after five days of being together. Two of those days were passive, too. He did nothing with her on two of the days. They’ve actually have only been actively together for three days.

“Sure, babe,” she murmurs in her soft and breathy sleep voice. He cannot even be sure that she is paying attention and listening to him. But then she says, “Got it. Lock up and don’t keep the keys. Do you want me to make you a few copies? I can stop at the store and get it cut for you.”

She’s actually just absently trying to be helpful because he seems fixated on the key being his last spare.

On his end, he’s all paranoid and worried that she is trying to force him into giving her a set of keys by offering him a jillion duplicates. This is why he says, “Nah, Missandei. I’m good. Just bring that one back.”

“Mmkay,” she says, sighing dreamily as she rubs her face into his pillow.

 

 

  
Only really elderly people are at Denny’s at 6 in the morning on a Sunday. Grey and Theon strategically picked Denny’s because it is open twenty hours a day and the food is also shit, so there will not be a line of hipsters lined up around the block trying to get into the restaurant.

Grey shoves just a crapton of shitty food into his face — just loads of eggs and loads of paper-thin bacon and loads of upgraded hashbrowns with cheese and sour cream. He also gets a side of pancakes because it's super cheap.

Surprisingly, he hates Denny’s less than he hates the bullshit that his staff likes to eat. Denny’s knows what it is. Denny’s doesn’t try to be trendy or aspirational.

“How are you not a million pounds?” Theon says slowly, pulling a short sip from his watery coffee.

“Genetics?”

The truth is that all of the simple carbs and fat and sugar he’s been eating is catching up to him. His metabolism is not impervious to a real shitty diet. He’s not like Drogo. His favorite activity outside of work isn’t repetitively lifting weights at a gym. His likes to occasionally jog or occasionally park his ass on a chair for hours reading books. He used to get a lot of cardio in because he used to walk or speed-walk everywhere. He’s had his car for months. He doesn’t yet realize what a toll all of the convenient driving is taking on his body. He has been losing muscle due to inactivity. The muscle loss and weight gain is not yet reflecting on his scale because fat weighs less than muscle. The effects of his lifestyle is actually written on his body, though — he’s gotten softer around his midsection — but he’s kind of in denial about it. He kind of likes to eat, and he kind of doesn’t want to change what he’s got going on. He’s not yet ready to face that fact that he is actually getting fatter.

 

 

  
He hangs out with Theon because he feels sorry for Theon — and it’s probably a slightly patronizing kind of pity, but there is also a fair bit of empathy, so Grey doesn’t see anything wrong with this. One of the things he likes about Theon is that Theon is not a talker. Theon is pretty content with sitting quietly and reflectively for long minutes. Grey likes this, too. They have started hanging out together so that Grey can say that he increased his social circle and so that Theon can get a reprieve from all the people in his life that want to fix him.

“So, what do you have going on for the rest of the day?” Theon asks, as they are driving back to Yara’s place.

“Nothing much,” Grey says, with his wrist casually slung over the top of his steering wheel. “Just dinner with Missandei’s family later tonight.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Yeah, it’s real fun to get heckled for not being Black enough. It’s also super fun to get threatened bodily harm all the time.”

“Oh.” Theon clears his throat.

Their rapport is currently terrible — because Theon doesn’t have much of a sense of humor these days and Grey’s sense of humor takes like, _years_ to really acclimate to. It takes a while for people to realize that he is hilarious.

And then super awkwardly, Theon says, “I think you’re Black enough.” He says this because he _does not know what else to fucking say._

“Ah, I appreciate that, man. But I don’t think you’re an authority on this?”

That is a joke. That is a Grey joke — just really low key joke, just a complete mind-fuck that solicits discomforting awkwardness.

Theon says, “No, dude. I didn’t mean to say — I didn’t mean to imply —” He actually does not know what he’s apologizing for.

Drogo is Grey’s best friend because Drogo would’ve released a honking laugh and just told him to shut the fuck up.

Theon is making him feel kind of dumb.

He says, “I was joking. Sort of. Not really.”

Which only _confuses Theon more._

 

  
“Baby,” Drogo says, watching Dany walk by in her workout get-up. “Where you going? It’s Sunday?” He means that Sunday is her sleep in and relax day. He means that Sunday is the day before Monday, when she turns back into a flaming bitch because she is overworked and probably slightly underweight. This is actually a criticism, but whenever he says it, Dany treats it like a compliment.

“I’m getting a workout in with Missandei. This is the only time we could sync up this week.”

“Ah,” he says. “Grey gonna be there, too?”

“No,” Dany says mildly. “I don’t think so.”

“Darn.”

Dany looks at him incisively, in a way that comes from years of fighting with him. She generally knows when he’s not saying all of what he wants to say. She says, “Darn?”

He gives her a look. He says, “Baby.” And then he just lets the statement hang. Because she must already know what he’s wanting to say.

He wants to say that he’s scared that Grey is getting fat. Drogo does not want Grey to get fat because he has to _look at_ Grey like, _all day._ He also has this unspoken criteria for the people in his inner circle. His people have to be multicultural, maybe multi-racial, creative, with above-average intelligence — and they have to be hot by conventional standards. They have to be hot _in spite_ of their personalities. The de-hottification of his best friend is fucking _alarming._ It’s not what he envisioned! Birds of a feather and all of that. What’s it going to look like when his other friends come through, see Grey in his life, and are like, whoa, Drogo is hanging out with fatties now?

Dany already knows what he is thinking. That is why she mutters, “Oh my God, I can’t fucking have this fight with you right now.”

Currently, Drogo only resides in jokes and passive aggressive comments about how Missandei won’t love Grey if he gets monstrously fat — which sound like jokes. Drogo has been gearing himself up for a full-fledge intervention, though. Drogo has been trying to gather a gaggle together so that they can all humiliate Grey together by talking about how fat and ugly he is becoming. Dany refuses to participate because even though she has noticed the change in body structure, Grey is her soft spot and she does not think he is hideous yet. Tyrion refuses to participate because, according to him, all of the stupid shit that good-looking people wrap themselves up in is fucking stupid as shit. Jaime refuses to participate because he went through an entire period of life where he had a diet like a woman, so that he could stay pretty like a woman. Jaime is like a woman and keeps saying that body shaming is not right. Daario has not seen Grey in a minute, so Drogo had to fucking tag Daario on Missandei’s Instagram pic of Grey naked — and when Daario was like  _???_ about it, Drogo had to do a screencap and fucking circle the belly pooch in red. Daario then came back with: _That’s it?_

And Drogo had to yell-text: _IT’S A SLIPPERY SLOPE!_

So Drogo is kind of going at this crusade alone. He’s currently trying to brainstorm ways to trick Grey into eating less and exercising more. It is hard. Because — Drogo suspects — Grey is significantly smarter than he is.

 

 

  
After Missandei wakes up for good, she spends about five minutes trying to creep on his shit — but she loses interest really fast because barring a dead body hidden somewhere, she probably already knows all of his dirty secrets. He has none. His place is really orderly and impeccable. He has a bunch of stuff fermenting in his fridge. There are toenail clippings sprinkled in a waste bin because he likes to clip his nails on the hardwood floor — collect the trimmings in a pile — and then dispose of them in one fell swoop into the nearest bin.

She doesn’t really want to drive all the way back to her place to grab a change of clothes, so she ends up continuing to borrow the clothes that she slept in. She makes Dany meet her a little bit earlier, and she makes Dany bring the biggest spare pair of running shoes she has and also a sports bra.

When Dany parks her car next to Missy’s, Dany holds up a bunch of shopping bags, showing them to Missy through the window excitedly.

And after Dany crawls into the car with Missy, Missy says, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t mean for you to go clothes shopping for me!”

“Oh, it was convenient,” Dany says. “My shoes are too small for your feet. And I think your boobs are too big for my bras. This just made sense.” Dany dumps the the contents of the bags out onto her lap before she does an impromptu show and tell. There are so many bras and multiple pairs of shoes. It is _excessive._ And Dany — who is rich enough that her concept of what is normal spending for normal people is now completely warped — asks, “These are all for you. They’re all in your size.” And then spontaneously, Dany reaches out to lightly fluff up Missandei’s messy, slept-on curls. She accurately says, “Sex hair!” in a really casual and oddly sing-songy intonation.

Missy says, “Dany, I can’t keep all of —”

“Come on then,” Dany interjects, already ripping off price tags with gusto. “We need to get a move on. Do you want me to keep a look out while you take off your shirt?” Dany looks out the window — and there’s are a few runners a distance away. Missandei probably has about thirty seconds before one crosses their path.

 

 

  
Even though Missandei thinks she looks like crap on a stick — wearing a shapeless men’s t-shirt and a pair of men’s basketball shorts that reach down past her knees — Dany’s trainer, Zane, flirts with her hardcore. Zane flirts with her because she is not his client, she is beautiful, she’s not wearing a wedding ring, and therefore she is fair game.

He talks a lot about swimsuit season — mostly getting ready for it. His ability to talk about body parts like it means absolutely nothing is nuts to Missy. Zane tells Dany to go deeper with her lunges if she wants that ass to pop a bit more. Zane tells Dany to envision how great her glutes are going to look as he verbally pushes her through another set.

Missandei likes to work out to the tone of like, female empowerment? She likes to fool herself into thinking that she’s motivated by health and athletic performance even though she is not at all athletically inclined. She would prefer that Zane shout out that they should strive to be their healthiest and happiness selves — rather than so much butt stuff.

But that is her body-oriented anxiety speaking out. She basically sprints really hard and does the circuits really well because she does not want to hear him encourage her by telling her to think about how her cheeks will look in bikini bottoms.

He is like, so impressed with her at the end of the workout. He grins widely at her and he says, “You’re amazing!”

She says, “Thanks.”

And then he asks her out. Dany is off refilling her water bottle and taking a phone call when he does it. He asks her if she’d like to grab a bite sometime.

She blushes as hard as she can — which probably does not show on her already flushed, darker skin. She says, “Oh, um. Sorry. I have — a boyfriend.”

And he is very kind. He maintains his grin — because he’s one of those super happy people that loves life. And he says, “Oh! Of course you do! How could you not? He’s a lucky guy!”

 

 

  
She is freshly showered, smelling like flowers, and dressed in her own clothes when she makes it to her brother’s place. She and Grey are driving separately because he’s only going to be there for the dinner portion of the night. Missandei likes to spend most of her day there. She likes the ramp up to dinner. She likes the hours of cooking — the time spent waiting for meat to marinate as well as the time spent letting her nieces show her dance moves that she is too uncoordinated and stiff to really accurately replicate.

Her brother _immediately_ says, “Where is he?” His tone is unimpressed and skeptical.

“He’ll be here in a few, don’t worry.”

“Oh, I ain’t worried,” he says, narrowing his eyes.

 

 

  
There is a lot of dancing and cooking when he arrives at Mars’ house. It is great because he’s fucking uptight and really aggressively awkward in situations where intimacy is immediate. Dancing is pretty intimate. He has felt this way every since Drogo told him that Drogo believes that dancing ability correlates to sexing ability. Drogo told him that it means something — when people can move their hips.

Those words have been burned into Grey’s mind. Unfortunately. So it’s pretty hard for him to dance — even though he’s not at all bad at it. He’s very capable, actually. Because he has a very good internal rhythm. But he doesn’t want to be capable at dancing and then have people assume that he is capable at sex.

“Hey, Grey!” Sarah says, being the first to notice him.

“Hey, what’s up?”

 

 

  
Grey’s maddeningly quiet — and actually, it only drives Mars mad, because Mars is constantly on the lookout for shit that he hates about Grey. Missy doesn’t care that he’s quiet — she surmises very accurately that he is monstrously uncomfortable here and that is why he is so quiet.

The girls’ sensitivities aren’t very nuanced yet because they are young. So they basically start talking to Grey as if they have known him for a long time. And in their heads, they actually have. They knew him when they were children. Sarah knew him when she was nine years old. Now she is getting ready for college. Now, Camille is job-searching and looking for an apartment with her boyfriend of four years.

So they start just talking to him a lot about all of their thoughts and all of their various opinions on things, from movies to music to relationships. Camille has an entire five-year plan in place. She tells him that she doesn’t want to be married until they have saved up enough to buy a house. She tells him that she does not want to have children until she is at least three years established in her career. Missandei gives him this short look of _something_ — these raised brows — before she turns back to the stove to stir the stew.

And then Mars just fucking gets all up in his ass. Marselen likes to front like he is a scary motherfucking thug — but Mars is actually now just suburban dad. The bulk of Grey’s frustration and wariness when it comes to Mars is actually the constant verbal confrontation and the constant verbal accusations. Also, the mean-mugging he can do without.

“Hey yo, man, are you putting on a few?” Mars asks, sitting on a dining chair in his kitchenette. “You look like you’ve gained a few.”

“Mars,” Missandei says warningly.

“What! It was just a question!”

Grey’s rubbing the back of his neck. He says, “Maybe. Maybe? I haven’t weighed myself in a while.”

“Well, we have a scale here. We can weigh you right now.”

“Mars!” Missandei snaps. _“Stop it!”_

“Calm down, Sissy. I’m just offering!”

 

 

  
They will spend the rest of the night apart because tomorrow is Monday, and he just wants to. She says goodbye to him in her brother’s driveway — she’s going to stay with her family for a little bit longer. She presses his spare key into his palm and she tells him that she’ll see him at the office tomorrow.

He asks, “Do I look weird or something? Like, am I starting to look weird?”

She says, “Babe, I love the way you look. I think you look great. You always look great to me.”

“Okay, that’s not comforting,” he says. “That just sounds like you have low standards.”

He’s joking. And she doesn’t completely read it as such. She also does not agree that she has low standards. She has her pick of really good-looking men. And she chose him. Okay, that sounds like she’s slumming it.

She says, “Don’t listen to my brother. He was trying to get under your skin.”

“Well, mission accomplished.”

 

 

  
Because Grey’s general denial over his unhealthy habits are so pervasive and strong, he goes to a completely rational place in his head. On his drive home, he touches various places on his body with one hand. He touches his stomach, his chest, his legs — he tries to touch his butt. And he cannot be completely sure. He touches his chest again, trying to cup a pec, or a breast. And he _thinks_ that it’s normal — or maybe it’s _not._

He plants the seed himself. He starts to wonder if it’s even possible — if maybe they didn’t actually get it all and it’s actually back and it’s actually been growing.

He touches his head.

 

 

 

 


	4. Jaime mentors Missy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime's first week on the job doesn't go great. But he kind of makes a new friend in the process. Missandei gets shitted on by a bunch of men because that's just her lot in life. Grey is going through some stuff.

 

 

 

  
Jaime’s entire first week at his new job is pretty rough. Brienne kind of made this prophetic joke on Monday morning. She told him that he was like a nervous little kid, starting off at a new school in the middle of the year.

And that is exactly how he feels.

He figures out fast that he overdresses for work. He is very used to wearing a suit and tie every day, and he actually thought he was dressing down in just a suit jacket — but it turns out that is not enough. He knows because Drogo immediately makes shitty jokes about yacht clubs, summering in Casterly Rock, sailing, and croquet — just the most randomass rich people stereotypes that Drogo’s mind can quickly grasp onto. And he says this shit with a lot of heat. Like, these are not cute, joking comments.

In the first week, Jaime learns that Grey’s reputation is not a joke. He is the biggest fucking shithole of a control freak. Jaime’s first tactic is to come straight out of the gate with ideas and suggestions, all of which Grey promptly shoots down in detail — with just a lot of detail on why Jaime’s ideas wouldn’t work and why they are all stupid. Jaime adjusts to that, accepting that he can’t offer ideas when he doesn’t know the ecosystem, so he starts shadowing them in their work — the creatives, Grey, Drogo, Missandei, Yoren — and for some reason, it makes Grey hostile and irritated because he resents having a shadow.

In Jaime’s first week, something unfortunate happens. Part of the reason Grey is so angry and cranky and why Drogo is so tense is because Missandei really pissed off one of the biggest clients. She pushed back too hard on the creative direction of a brand build out — and this was after they racked up a lot of billable hours trying to make edits and updates to appease the client. She was fed up with the changes and the excessive labor put on the project just because a bunch of men couldn’t make of their minds and they also have really shitty taste. Missandei must’ve intimated as much, because Grey got a call from the client rep demanding that Missandei get taken off their account. They asked him if he knew what his people were doing. They told him that he better right his ship, and he better personally put in the time to fix this.

 

 

  
He tells her to apologize to the client. She doesn’t think she has done anything wrong, but she apologizes to the client anyway. Her apology is patronizingly received, and she still gets taken off the account anyway. She is a professional with a lengthy career doing this kind of work, so this is not the first time this has happened to her — this is not the first time she has had to eat shit because of things that were outside of her control, because she had a desire to do good work and she dared to assert an opinion. This is fucking life.

And she doesn’t expect for him to side with her just because he is fucking her. She does not expect him to make an epic gesture like he’d do if their lives were a movie. This is a huge client, so she does not expect for Grey to tell them to fuck off and go somewhere else with their business.

She just doesn’t think he would bend over and just fucking acquiesce to everything. She does not expect him to be a yes man. She does not expect him to fucking lecture her after everything goes really well for him with the client. She doesn’t expect him to be so fucking stupid that he thinks it’s his talent and his management style that the client likes — rather than his reputation. She does not like that he spends the rest of the week acting like a complete martyr, as he works long hours with the staff to deliver on time.

He doesn’t have time to see her at all for the entire week — not that it matters because even if he had time, she would not want to see him.

 

 

  
Jaime and Missy go out to lunch together on Friday, because they are the only two people on staff who aren’t busy as fuck scrambling to get new concept work in the hands of the client before the client breaks for their big conference. If the concept isn’t delivered by the end of week, then they will have to push out deadlines, which will be a pain in the ass because the launch of new branding is tied to a million other things.

Jaime takes her to a nice restaurant. Jaime correctly guesses that Grey probably never takes her to excessively nice restaurants. Brienne is also massively uncomfortable in nice restaurants — or fancy places in general — so Jaime doesn’t have much opportunity to go to any since he’s been with her.

“Let’s get some foie gras,” Jaime says. “And like, let’s hit up this risotto with truffles.”

“Man, I never get to eat anything with truffles, real or fake, because Grey doesn’t allow it,” she says.

“Does that mean you want to or you don’t?”

“Oh my God,” she says in a deadpan. “Let’s get two plates of it.”

“Do you want to see the wine list?” he asks. “Just fucking with you. Of course you wanna see it.” He hands over the menu to her. “Lunch is on me, hon. Because I have way more money than you do. Get an entire fucking flight even.”

He feels sorry for her. She knows. This is a pity lunch date. And it’s totally cool because she _never_ gets a chance to eat fancy food anymore because Grey thinks haute cuisine is racist. And it is. But it’s not like his clothes weren’t made on the back of imperialism, and it’s not like he’s going around obsessively ranting about ethically sourced cotton tees.

“Remember when you left me a million angry voicemails on my phone telling me to never show my traitorous face in King’s Landing ever again?” she says to Jaime, keeping her face straight. “Oh, how far we’ve come.”

 

 

  
Lunch is a bit of a trip for the both of them. Jaime doesn’t think he’s ever had lunch with a beautiful woman who isn’t his sister in public before. The dynamic and the looks he gets from people, being out with Missandei, is different. For instance, usually when he is out with his brother and he catches people looking at him, it is like Tyrion is invisible. It’s the same with Brienne, except sometimes people are outrightly offended or really supportive when they figure out that he and Brienne are together.

When people looked at them, when he held open the door for Missandei as she swung out her long, moisturized legs and heaved herself out of his car before brushing down her tight skirt to ensure that it’s still covering her butt — he could not tell if people were looking at him or if they were looking at her. And it’s not good or bad — it’s just different. It actually just kind of reminds him that his social circle is kind of limited and small. He has no female friends. He barely has any male friends.

Lunch with a handsome white guy is different for Missy because, while Grey is handsome too, he’s also got a mean resting bitch face, a shaved head, and darker skin. Jaime has flowy blond hair that he must dye and is comparatively very safe and very accessibly handsome.

She keeps checking her phone, because she keeps expecting to get reamed out for taking a lunch that is going on its second hour while everyone back the office is slaving away.

“I actually could’ve continued working on the account in private, behind the scenes, but he doesn’t think it’s a good idea,” she says to Jaime, swirling her wine around.

“Yeah,” Jaime says. “That’s interesting.” He’s lying. He doesn’t find her guilt or her dedication to her job or her deference to Grey very interesting at all.

 

 

  
She gets kind of day-time drunk — and through a text with Drogo — she learns that they do not need her whatsoever. And obviously Jaime is useless and unneeded because it’s like — what is even his job again?

“See, you think that’s funny. But that’s actually been a source of friction between me and your partners.”

“It’s actually weird to hear you call them that,” Missandei mutters, as she climbs back into his shiny black car. “I don’t feel like a partner most of the time.”

 

 

  
She jokingly and bitterly makes a comment about how she doesn’t know how to be a winner like a white man. She doesn’t know how to be powerful. She doesn’t know how to take control. She is just feeble and got punished for being too direct when she should’ve been more flirty and touchy feely or something.

This is why Jaime detours on their way back to the office. The detour takes an entire extra hour. He pulls over at a cigar lounge. Missandei sees it — and it’s a fucking stereotype of mahogany and glasses of bourbon. And she is like, “What the fuck is this!” completely too loudly because she is kind of drunk.

“My God, be cool,” Jaime says, nodding at staff member, wrapping his arm around her waist as he ushers her to a room so that she doesn’t trip on her heels and fall flat on her face.

In a private room, he actually teaches her how to smoke a cigar. She is a bad student because she’s never smoked at all, let alone cigars. So she inhales deeply right after he tells her not to do that. And she starts hacking loudly as her fingers dig into the leather armchair she is sitting in.

 

 

  
Jaime looks at her, with her legs crossed, with the slit of her skirt rising indecently up her bare thigh because she currently is sloppy and not incredibly uptight and buttoned down like she usually is when she is working. She is smiling and laughing and kind of beautiful-looking and he gets why Grey loves her — he understands it. He tells her that he’s never had a protege before.

She gives him a withering stare. She says, “Bro, I am not your protege. We’re like, colleagues now. I’m like, your contemporary. Actually! If anything, I am actually kind your boss.”

“Okay, so lesson number one, my new protege,” Jaime says, grinning at her. “Process your thoughts internally — stay quiet. And then say the last thing out loud. And confidently. Just say that you are my boss.”

“I am your boss,” she parrots back as she blows out a cloud of cigar smoke. She professes to absolutely hate this, but she told him she likes that she gets to do something like this — she gets to be inner sanctum today.

 

 

  
When Jaime and Missandei get back — more than three fucking hours after they left for lunch — it’s very obvious they’ve been drinking. Her especially. She looks happy and relaxed — so that’s how he knows she’s been drinking.

He generally eyes them steady and kind of angrily as they continue chatting and laughing with each other.

 

 

  
Grey ends up just telling them to go home, because they become a point of distraction. The rest of the staff keep looking over at Jaime and Missandei.

After he tells her to just go home early, she levels him with a stare. Her face is alive and vibrant and a touch messy — it’s very clear to him she’s been drinking. She says, “You really just gonna send me home? I can actually help.”

“Missandei,” he says warningly. The client was very clear. They are on thin ice. He does not want to jeopardize the relationship because this client pays for a third of all of their salaries.

 

 

  
After being dismissed like he is a fucking child, Jaime takes the opportunity to stop off at the grocery store to buy some flowers. He lets himself into Brienne’s apartment and puts the flowers in a vase. She is secretly a girl, and she likes girly shit like flowers because they are pretty and colorful.

She’s surprised to see him in her apartment when she comes home from work. Her hands are braced against the back of her couch as she leans forward to kiss him hello. His face stays upturned after they part — he smiles up at her — he says, “How was your day?”

She says, “About normal. I’m more interested in how your day went.” She pauses for a little bit. And then she says, “You taste like alcohol, and you smell like smoke.”

“My day went about how my week went,” he answers.

“That good, huh?”

“Everyone was right. It is a minefield, working with friends.”

 

 

  
They don’t finish until nearly 11 o’clock. All of them had to make calls around 6 PM to tell people that they were going to miss their obligations because they were working late. Meera had to cancel on a date that was probably going to go nowhere. Pyp had to miss a dinner with friends. Jojen was slated to play video games.

Grey feels bad that everyone’s night was taken away, that he just about starts handing out money as they all tiredly gather up their things to pack away for the weekend.

“Keep your guilt money,” Meera mutters tiredly. “I don’t want it.”

“Shoot,” Yoren says, swiping a bill from Grey’s hand as he heads to the door. “I’ll take some of that. Thanks, boss. Kiss Missandei hello for me. Maybe take that leftover cash and buy her something nice.” Yoren has started giving absolutely no fucks about what he says to Grey in regard to Missandei. Because there’s no way Grey will fire him. And Grey feels weird yelling at Yoren. And he thinks that Grey was a fucking _asshole_ to Missandei all week.

Sure enough, Grey just unhappily ignores Yoren’s commentary.

 

 

  
Drogo lightly slaps his hand onto Grey’s face so that he can pull Grey close and into a hug. They have no plans to get together one-on-one over the weekend because they are trying to not be so fucking obsessed with each other all the time. He tells Grey to get some rest, get some relaxation, and maybe beg for forgiveness.

Everyone has a fucking opinion on his life.

Drogo was supposed to go see a movie with Dany — who never watches action flicks with car chases. But he has been to the opera way more fucking times than he would have liked, so she really owes him one. She was so fucking ecstatic when he had to cancel their plans, too.

This is why he thinks that he deserves sex. He says goodbye to Grey, then he drives to her place. He finds her on her elliptical. He tells her that she looks really good all sweaty. He’s not lying, but it’s also a line.

She reads it correctly. She hops off so that she can kiss him hello. She has to crane her neck way back because she’s in her running shoes and he’s way taller than she is. He grabs a hold of her — he’s good at this stuff, at finding the good tension and drawing it out — he mutters, “Hey, baby,” in a low growl. And then he puts his mouth on her. She tastes like salt and she feels warm underneath his hands.

 

 

  
His heart just starts aching when he is alone, because he feels upset. He’s spent the entire week just trying to survive and trying to keep his head above water. He spent the entire week really locked down because he had to just do what he needed to do. And now, perhaps the hard part is done, so he sees the light at the end of the tunnel, and he feels just terrible and upset over it because sometimes — this is just it. This is all he has. This grind. And he just feels exhausted and stressed out and he’s been really worried about what is happening inside of his head.

He hasn’t told anyone about his fears. He doesn’t want to until he knows that there’s actually something to talk about. He doesn’t want the conversation to be about how fucking stupid he is and how fucking paranoid he is. He has been slammed all week, so he hasn’t gotten a chance to get away to make a call to his doctor’s office, to make an appointment.

He doesn’t even know whether to hit up his GP or hit up his specialist. He doesn’t want to go to his GP only to have the GP refer to him a specialist. But he also doesn’t want to go to Dr. Aemon and have Dr. Aemon tell him that he’s being dumb and idiotic because there’s nothing fucking wrong with his brain other than the average sort of mental retardation that he has. He would feel so fucking stupid if he went to the doctor for nothing.

He doesn’t even know if he wants to know. He doesn’t want to find out that his head is actually fucked and his life is fucked and it’s just all going to be cut short. The timing of that is really great, because his business is doing really well and he has someone who loves him. So it would make sense that his time is limited.

He basically decides to just go home and be by himself — but she texts him. He has no idea how she knows that they are done. Maybe it is a shot in the dark. But she’s asking him of he wants to come over.

 

 

  
When he gets to her apartment, when she opens the door with damp hair and a clean face because she showered not too long ago, after coming home from the gym — he just grabs her face in both of his hands and he just starts pouring all of his pent up emotions into her. He kisses her hard and frantically. He pushes his tongue into her mouth as she groans and tries to climb him.

He picks her up. Her legs goes around his waist. He just holds onto her tightly.

He takes her into her bedroom and he lays her body down on her bed. His hands are clumsy and inaccurate as he takes off her clothes. Her eyes are sparkling and she’s staring at him through her lashes. She tries to get him to linger a little and to take his time taking off her clothes. She takes his hand and rubs it against her bare chest.

His voice cracks as he says, “Missandei, I am so sorry about this week.”

The corners of her mouth tilt down into a frown. She says, “We can talk about it after.” She says the word after, as she grabs his shirt and wrenches his face down so she can kiss him again.

 

 

  
Even as he is doing this with her, even as it’s everything he currently just needs — he’s still just obsessing about the fucking past repeating itself. Maybe he’s delaying a pivotal doctor visit that will stop him from dying because he is a fucking moron. Maybe he is going to risk dying because he has some weird thing about sickness. He thinks back to his trip to the Summer Isles and how he let his food poisoning get so out of control that he had to be hospitalized. He thinks about how he is the poster child for grinning and bearing it until it all ends because of death.

She grabs a tight hold on his shirt as he crawls down her skin, trailing kisses as he heads to his final destination. His shirt is in her fist as she tries to pull him up, as she whimpers and softly confesses, “I really want you to fuck me. Hard. So that it almost hurts.” She might mean that she really wants something tangible she can grab onto, something that proves to her that he wants her sometimes and he needs her sometimes.

He’s pulling off her underwear. He extracts it from her legs with a short snap. He shoves it into the blankets. He says, “I really want to go down on you first, though.” He means that he wants to be able to give her something. He wants to say he contributed something and that his presence in her life doesn’t just amount to nothing.

Her pupils are blown — as she looks at his face in between her legs. She says, “Okay.”

 

 

  
He actually can’t fuck her hard, and definitely not to the point of it hurting. He can’t really make himself do that tonight. He actually just shakes and grinds out this desperate exhale as he pushes himself into her. He’s on top, and she’s underneath him, and this way, he can stay close to her face and look at it. He hovers very near her, as he slowly withdraws and drags himself out of her. It is agonizingly slow, and it makes her twist her head to the side. It makes her teeth latch onto the first bit of him she can find — it’s his forearm. She lightly bites down on his skin and shuts her eyes. And he’s shocked to see that she’s crying — that there are tears leaking down the side of her face.

She softly nudges him with her legs around his body. Of course he listens to her. He vocally gasps out this sound as he pushes himself back into her, firmly and comprehensively. Her eyes fly open and her brows knit together in tension — the good kind. He drops his head down to kiss her cheek, to hide his face into her pillow. But it’s too late. She already saw him.

She wraps her arm around his neck and shoulders and angles her hips up as he slowly and thoroughly pushes and pulls in and out of her. She keeps whispering his name, and she keeps telling him that she loves him. And it makes him feel kind of really happy as it also just devastates him.

 

 

  
She doesn’t bring up the fact that he teared up and cried during sex right to his face. Because everyone probably cries during sex at some point. But when he comes back to bed after getting rid of the condom, she opens her arms to him, and she makes room for him beside her. She strokes her hand down his bare back as he lies down, as he generally stays quiet.

She says, “Is everything okay?”

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Missy learns a secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey tells Missy about his health concerns.

 

 

  
He is a bit of atypical in the sense that he is one of those men who has a lot of difficulties talking about his emotions and his feelings — but he has relatively few issues talking about his sex-related insecurities. As her hand runs up and down his back, as she asks him if everything is okay, he rolls over a little to kiss the slope of her breast. She smells like soap. He says, “What we just did — did that seem normal to you?”

Her hand on his back stills for a moment, stuttering before she resumes the caress. She doesn’t even know which part he is referring to — if he’s referring to the crying or the super slow, super emotional fucking or the part at the beginning where she begged him to get inside of her and he responded by giving her a choking orgasm with his lips and tongue instead. She has to bite down on her bottom lip to keep herself from smiling too obviously — because this is kind of hilarious. She says, “Um, are you talking about something specific about what we just did? Or just all of it?”

“Like, how did my penis feel to you?”

She does actually laugh out loud at that. She says, “Grey! Are you fishing for a compliment!”

“No!” he says right away, kind of aghast over the very thought. “I was wondering if my dick felt off to you.”

She goes rigid at that — because she thought this conversation was heading into the cutesy post-coital victory lap kind of territory — but it’s not. She actually shuffles up to get into sitting position, pulling him along with her. The sheets are pooled in her lap. Her breasts are just hanging out. And her hands are pressed into his cheeks as she forces him to look at her. His expression is slightly tense.

She leans forward to kiss him, comfortingly and firmly. When she pulls away, she says, “Did _you_ think your penis off? Did something about sex feel different for you? Because I thought it was strange that you cried.”

“Okay, I did not cry,” he says, his voice low and hard — just for a moment. His tone immediately softens, and he flicks his gaze up to the ceiling for a split second. He says, “I was sweating a lot, out of my eye sockets. It’s a condition. Look it up.”

 

 

  
Quickly, she realizes she is allaying none of his concerns with her questions. So, with a hand still on his cheek, she tells him that she did not detect anything different in sex — beyond certain emotional beats. They don’t really have sex slow, and he doesn’t typically sweat out of his eyes. So that difference probably caught most of her attention. But physically — it didn’t seem anything was amiss. It was like, really fucking great. It was like, really good sex. Like, he fucks _so fucking good_. And so he was consistent in this way.

“Again, I’m not fishing for a compliment,” he says.

“I know,” she returns. “Can’t I just say nice things about you sometimes?” The question is rhetorical, obviously, but he still manages to look like he has something biting he wants to say on the tip of his tongue.

She starts trying to pull the bedsheet off of his lap, so she can see his penis.

He grabs the material and keeps it in place. It’s an instinctive and automatic response — he’s being protective and he’s scared. It’s so weird for him to cry during sex because he just barely cries — he barely gets to that point. But in the recent past, he finds that he’s been a lot more susceptible to emotion and he’s had a much harder time steering his own emotions. And that feels kind of familiar. When he was younger and flooded with prolactin, he couldn’t even get a handle on any of his emotions at all. He was deeply sensitive and raw all the time. He suffered under the waves of his changing moods. He keeps looking for signs that his brain is all fucked up again.

She loosens her hold on the sheet a little bit. Her eyes are compassionate. And then she says, “It’s okay. I just want to see. Please.”

Reluctantly — and with effort — he releases his tight hold on the sheets. She gently pulls it, exposing him.

 

 

  
She tries to examine his penis quickly but thoroughly. She doesn’t want to take too long in case he just freaks out during her silent assessment. Visually — it totally looks like his penis. It’s totally normal-looking. She says, “It looks the same to me, babe.” And then she reaches out to carefully touch him — he’s a little tacky and sticky — and she says, “Is this okay?” She means if he’s okay with her touching him.

He thickly says, “Yeah.”

“Um, so what is the issue you are worried about?” she says, lifting him up to look at the underside of his penis. That totally looks normal, too. “Like, I’m not seeing any cuts or sores or like, signs of STDs or weird colors or thorns or _anything.”_

“Do you think it got hard enough?”

Again — she has to stop herself from laughing in his face. Because he is so fucking cute, so fucking tragic, and so fucking nutty sometimes. She says, “Yeah, baby. It sure did.”

“No, Missandei, I’m serious.”

“So am I!” she says, looking up at his face with her eyes wide and searching. “Babe, I think your penis is totally normal. I think your erection was totally normal. It wasn’t like, floppy — and we didn’t have to slap you around to get the blood flowing enough to cram you inside me.”

She starts stroking him lightly, trying to test things out. She watches and feels him, as he expands in her hand — in spite of his best efforts at holding back. She blindly swats her other hand around behind her, trying to hit her side table so she can grab the bottle of lube that she keeps there. She keeps her hand on him as she grabs it, shuts her drawer noisily, and flicks open the cap of the lube with her thumb.

She says, “This is going to be cold — sorry,” right before she pauses in stroking him and squirts a squiggle of lube directly onto him. He kind of sucks in a quiet gasp because it _is_ cold. And then she twists her hand around to distribute the lube, before she resumes stroking him.

He says, “Oh my God,” as he stares down at her active hand. His body is flushed — his face feels swollen — he’s like, suddenly way less concerned about the potential brain tumor he has in his head right now. He tries to suppress a groan — to keep this clinical and not sexual.

She shuffles over a little closer to him. She smoothly strokes him up to the tip, making him spasm, and then she pushes her hand down to the base. She says, “Okay, so, Grey. So based on some preliminary observations, you’re not like hard like a steel rod — but really who is? But I’d say that it’d probably hurt you a hell of a lot if I took both of my hands and tried to break you in half.”

He actually physically flinches at her words — because he’s imaging it. He says, “Yeah. Please don’t do that.”

 

 

  
She tries to resume the hand job. He tries to get her to stop because he’s actually not trying to manipulate her for more sex. He doesn’t want to come across like this. He pulls her hand off of him by the wrist, and then he pulls her close so that her naked body is basically in his lap. He kisses her forehead before he just envelopes her in a tight hug, which she eagerly returns. She actually melts into it, as her slippery hand smears lube across his shoulder blade. She schmoopily says, “My baby,” into the side of his face.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m gonna level with you, here.”

“Oh, awesome,” she says, keeping it light even as her heart starts to speed up. She’s nervous and scared of what he’s about to say.

“I’ve been a little freaked out — or _a lot freaked out_ — because I’m worried that my brain tumor might be back.”

And then her whole world just goes a little bit fuzzy. Pinpricks of goosebumps bloom over her skin as the surprise of his statement continues to roll over her. She says, “What? What are you talking about?”

 

 

  
He explains to her all of the reasons why he thinks that his brain tumor might be back. He tells her that he’s been so fucking emotional lately — just a fucking basketcase of feelings. This is actually news to her, because he has not exhibited any of his feelings outwardly.

He also tells her that his body is changing. He is carrying more weight than ever before. His body is not being as efficient as it typically is. Maybe he is lacking in testosterone. He tells her that he doesn’t have headaches yet, but sometimes it feels like he’s on the verge of headaches. Maybe his tumor is not big enough yet.

She doesn’t like that he keeps talking about _his_ tumor. She just flat-out starts pushing out a bunch of denial. She starts refuting everything he is saying. She tells him that he’s actually not excessively emotional. Like, that is not a fucking quality that he has. She tells him that yes, his body has changed, but they are just getting fucking older and it’s not going to be like what it was when they were in their 20s. She also not-to-gently points out that he’s been fucking eating like crazy, like he’s pregnant and trying to eat for two. She tells him that she loves his chubbier body of course, but there are so many potential reasons for it — other than brain tumor.

She gets into fixer mode, because for right now, it’s what she can control and it’s what she is using to anchor herself. She tells him, “You just need to make an appointment with your doctor to settle this. If you find out it’s not back, then you know that you need to make some lifestyle changes. If you find out it’s back — which is highly unlikely — then I bet you’re getting it really early.” She runs her hand over his face, over his head. Against her own wishes, she momentarily flashes to shitty a future without him. She softly says, “You don’t have headaches yet.”

 

 

  
They just lie together nakedly for the rest of the night. He keeps talking about his brain tumor. He keeps imagining the extent of its progression. He keeps speculating how it could have grown undetected. He keeps citing information and research that is many years too old at this point. He talks about how there’s no such thing as a one-hundred percent success rate. He actually wonders out loud if it could be malignant this time around — and maybe he just has cancer. He tells her that there have been many people who have died very young from cancer.

She is sweating profusely as she lies beside him, trying not to let his words manipulate her into crying. She keeps telling him it’s probably not a fucking brain tumor. It’s not fucking cancer. They have nothing to base any of this on. She keeps telling him that she’s going to punch him so hard in the face, when they learn that this is not a brain tumor, and it turns out that he just stirred himself into a frenzy and freaked her out for no fucking reason. She comes at him with aggression in order to manage her fears, as she continues to process this new information.

She tells him that he’s probably just getting fat. She tells him that he’s such a fucking fragile man. When women gain weight, they sometimes wonder if they are pregnant. That is the worst that it ever gets. But when men like him gain weight, he thinks he’s dying. She tells him he’s really fucking melodramatic sometimes.

He tells her that it would be awesome, if that were the case. He’d be fucking ecstatic — if he was just getting fat. He tells her that he gets tired more easily these days. He tells her he used to get tired all the time. He used to need so much sleep all the time. He tells her he’s been trying to measure everything about himself.

He tells her that he was stressed out about this all week — and he’s very sorry he’s been shitty to her and to everyone. He is just not a very good person sometimes. He is not always consistently kind. He’s already talking as if he has these regrets that he cannot fix.

She refutes all of this. She holds onto him tightly and she presses her hands into his body. She tells him that he’s so very fucking kind. She tears up — she cries a little bit as she talks about it straight on. She transparently tells him, “Grey, I _can’t_ lose you _again._ I’ve only just gotten you back. We haven’t had _any_ time together. It wouldn’t be fair. You are the _love_ of my _life.”_

He doesn’t know what he can say to this. He’s not the kind of guy that is very good at reassuring people with lies. He doesn’t know what the future holds. He says, “Missandei —”

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t say it back to me just because you’re scared you might be dying.” And then, in lunacy, she blinks back her tears and she corrects herself. She says, “We are all actually dying. It all ends the same. The difference is just when and how.”

He pulls her into his body, and he holds her tight. He says, “Maybe it’s not a tumor. Maybe it’s nothing at all.”

And that is actually pretty huge for him — to offer that up.

 

 

  
His mood actually isn’t bad after they wake up. They have a lunch get-together at noon. He wakes up early partly because the bed and the environment is foreign — and also because he naturally gets up early. He spends the first hour of awakeness just pressing into her. She’s warm and peaceful and still sleeping, and so he gently pushes the tip of his nose into her cheek and runs his hand over her stomach. He lies there for maybe an hour — just thinking. He doesn’t dare feel optimistic, because he worries that he’s just setting himself up for failure and heartbreak.

After she wakes up, she’s groggy and takes half an hour before she feels like she’s functioning semi-normally. She loiters in bed with him, sometimes they talk about the things they are going to do in the immediate future — and sometimes they say nothing. Sometimes she just twists her fingers in his and tries to figure out new and novel ways for them to hold hands.

When they have to finally get up to get ready, she lazily makes them some coffee as he showers. When he comes out of the shower, mostly naked save for a towel, she’s already holding a hot cup of coffee and sipping carefully from it. She has a camera held loosely in her hand.

He says, “Missandei, no,” but he sounds resigned rather than combative.

She lifts it and snaps a picture of him. She says, “Sorry,” anyway. She doesn’t even make a joke about how she is going to be documenting every single moment they have together, because it all now suddenly feels too precious.

They have to really look hard to find him clothes to wear. And he might have a tumor in his head and his life may be cut short, so she doesn’t even give a fuck about posterity as she says, “You should bring some of your clothes over. I will make room for you in my closet. It’s fucking ridiculous that we keep pretending that this relationship isn’t serious. It’s already serious as serious gets.”

He thinks he’s being factual and reasonable as he says, “We’ve been together for two weeks, Missandei.”

She corrects him. She says, “We’ve been together for years.”

 

 

  
Both of them — spurred on by the idea that maybe their time together could be limited and that it’s possible that they could get ripped from each other again — this time not because of geography or his commitment phobia, but because of death — they start interacting with each other with this fear in the back of their minds.

Before lunch, after they are both completely dressed, she pulls the skirt of her dress over her hips. She has him unzip his pants and she has him fuck her fast and rough as she’s bent over her kitchen sink. He worms his hand around to her front and tries to get his fingers on her clit. She gasps and tells him that they don’t have the fucking time for that. She tells him that his dick is really magnificent and really substantial and hard inside of her. She says it because it’s true. She also says it because she’s trying to push back her fears.

He doesn’t listen to her. He runs firm circles around her clit with one hand, as the other hand tucks itself into the fold of her dress and her bra. He tells her that he’s going to fuck her however he wants. He massages her breast and works her nipple, and it turns her on so much that she yanks and then bends the neck of her faucet. There’s a loud cracking sound.

It shocks him — so much that he suddenly pulls out of her and says, “Oh my God.”

The insides of her shaky legs are a wet mess.

 

 

  
They are late to lunch because their quickie kind of took a while. And then he had to fumble around underneath her sink to shut off the water, because he doesn’t want her to come back to her apartment and find it all flooded.

In the car, he tells her, “I don’t want to talk about this with our friends. I don’t want to invite questions or worry them before we know whether there is something to worry about.”

Perhaps in another circumstance, she’d be excited that he deemed her worthy enough to be his secret keeper. But right now, she says, “You have to tell Drogo.”

 

 

 

 


	6. Grey ruins lunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey tells his best friends about his worries of death --- begrudgingly.

 

 

She starts to list off reasons why Drogo should be told — and he doesn’t really need her reasons. He knows why. The practical reason is that Drogo is his business partner, and Grey’s ability to work affects the long term success of their business. The emotional reason is that Drogo has been his partner — in a general sense — for many years now. Also, Grey’s not a complete idiot with other people’s feelings. He remembers the dozens of emotional arguments he and Drogo have had over the years about that one time Grey had brain surgery without telling Drogo — which, Grey still maintains, he had reasons for.

He keeps his hand on a part of her body always. Today, he is extra sensitive, so he cannot help it. He squeezes her knee as he slowly navigates the car on side streets, as he fights through a bunch of assholes who can’t fucking drive so he can find a parking spot.

After he parallel parks kind of recklessly, with the car beeping loads to tell him he’s so close to hitting other cars, he explodes of the vehicle kind of already fed up with everything. He slams his door shut.

And then he walks around so that he can press a brief hug into her as she exits out of the car. He tells her that her dress looks nice on her as they pull apart. She looks like she’s tempted to just pull him back in, to just drag him into the back seat to get something going really quick — but it is broad daylight and there are tons of people around.

He sucks out a wet kiss from her giving mouth — and he thinks that he feels so young still. He feels like he’s barely lived his life, and he’s not ready to let her go again.

He looks at her face as he lightly exhales. He touches her chin, and he says, “Stop this.” She keeps tearing up. Her face is going to be a fucking dead giveaway to all of their friends if she keeps this up. He murmurs, “Can’t take you anywhere. Should’ve left you at home.”

She laughs, her expression softening at the word home — though she knows it’s just an expression, and she can’t be weird about it or else he’ll get _massively_ weird about it. She brushes this invisible lint off his shoulder. “We can pretend I’m crying because we’re fighting?” she offers. “I think people will buy that, because I’m an angel and you’re kind of a jerk sometimes.”

A smile breaks across his face over her honesty. He chooses not to comment on the part where she said she’s an angel. Instead, he softly touches the curly ends of her hair and he says, “Okay, so let’s get our story straight. What exactly are we fighting about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we’re fighting because you’re emotionally unavailable.”

“Oh, that again? That’s so tired, Missandei. You need to come up with some fresh material.”

She rolls her eyes. “Okay, how about marriage and children. You wanna fight about that?”

“Shit,” he says, blinking against the sunlight as he squeezes her hand. His heart is already slamming hard in his chest at the very thought. He has issues. She has to know this. He pulls her off of the car. He says, “That escalated fast.”

 

 

  
Yara is a fidgeter. She alternates between picking the stiff corners of her degrading pink nail polish and exacerbating the blemishes on her face from touching them too much. She gulps down another mouthful of water before setting her glass down in front of her. Grey and Missandei are super late, and Yara doesn’t have much to say to Dany or Drogo, beyond this:

“Look, I am happy they are back together again for now, but sometimes they just bring out the worst in each other.”

Drogo gives her a smile. “Says the anti-monogamist.”

Yara resists rolling her eyes, because Drogo has gotten high and mighty and really serene and patient ever since he got with Dany, and it sometimes fucking cramps what Yara is all about. She says, “You guys are fucking each other exclusively, and look at you — managing to get to places on time.”

“I mean, we all have our strengths,” Dany says drolly, flipping her phone over to check the time.

“You’re not all obsessed with each other that you can’t see or talk about anything else or _do_ anything _else,”_ Yara insists. “Because this is what they do. They fucking do their sex hibernating for months and months, and when they do come out and show their faces, all Missandei can fucking do is talk about how great he is, and all he can fucking do is retreat into himself and act all distracted and like his friends are an _inconvenience_ in his fucking life.”

“Ah,” Drogo says, in understanding now. Yara wasn’t so close with Grey the last time he and Missandei were together for real. And now she is. “Yeah, I getcha. He and I have been spending less time together, too.”

“I am _not_ jealous,” Yara says testily. “I just want to be at the center of each of their respective worlds. Is that too much to ask?” And then she cracks a smile and starts chuckling. She says, “I know. I know. I know.”

 

 

  
Before they head to the table, Grey says to her, “Be cool.”

She confidently says, “Baby, I am fucking so _cool_ that I am ice _cold.”_

He stares at her for a beat, because he doesn’t like how not-seriously she is taking this. But it’ll probably be fine.

Grey strategically reaches out and touches her stomach as they head to the table — to make her turn back at him in surprise so that he can smile at her encouragingly. He’s telling her she can do this.

Missandei generally has a good reputation for being a solid ride or die bitch. Her devotion and her loyalty to her family and friends are two of her more defining traits. Another thing she is known for is her discretion. She is not really a gossip. She is careful and studied in managing different agendas and strong personalities. She is great at keeping interpersonal interactions smooth and productive.

He’s not seeing _any of that good shit_ about her today.

She starts sniffling and dropping fat tears when she makes eye contact with Drogo. She’s horrified about this, too. She’s shocked. She actually looks down at her hands momentarily, as if she expects to see blood on them. And then she looks up at Drogo — and her heart kind of seizes because she’s thinking that if there is anyone else in the world who will understand how she feels and what it all means, it is probably Drogo.

Drogo is staring back at her dumbfounded — the whole table is. He says, “Holy shit. What did I do to you already?”

“I said be cool!” Grey hisses, kind of snapping at her — a woman who is crying in public. This is exactly why he doesn’t like telling people personal things about himself.

 

 

  
Grey watches as Missandei tries commit to this fucking farce, even though it is clear she does not want to lie to their friends and is really bad at it. He watches as her lower lip trembles and as a sob escapes her face — which causes Yara’s brows to shoot up into her hairline. He has to repress this impatient sigh as Missandei pulls in deep breaths and stutters out, “W-we had a fight —”

He shakes his head. He says, “No, we didn’t.”

“We d-did!” she insists. “He h-hates children.”

“This is true,” he says. “But we didn’t fight about that.”

“Oh my God,” Yara mutters, crossing her arms over her chest kind of aggressively, like she is folding them up so she doesn’t accidentally throw a punch. “I’m so fucking over the _constant drama_ you bring. Can we just have one meal where it’s not all about how Grey fucking _sucks_ at _empathy?”_

“Oh shit,” Grey mutters appraisingly, crossing his own arms — but he’s relaxed and slouching down a little bit in his seat. He’s surprised and yet, he’s also not surprised that Yara is pushing this attitude at him before he’s even gotten a chance to even say much of _anything._ He says, “I love that you are already so bitchy ‘cause —”

“You guys are so _late!”_ she snaps, cutting him off.

“Man, we texted you. It happens —”

“It happens _a lot_ with you —”

“What the hell? No it doesn’t.”

“Missandei was _never late_ before she started having sex with you,” Yara accuses. “You infect her with your apathy for other people’s time —”

“I _infect_ her?”

“Babe,” Drogo says, trying to ignore Grey and Yara, trying to address Missandei. “Why you cryin’?”

Missandei says, “Oh,” softly — and then jumps in her seat in surprise as Yara shouts.

“You even made _me_ extra late to Missy’s nameday party last year!” Yara says to Grey, with open hostility now.

“Are you seriously _still_ holding that against me?” Grey says incredulously. “It was fucking _last year!_ And we showed up and everything was _fine,_ wasn’t it?”

“Man! I’m not saying that one incident fucking keeps me up at night ‘cause I’m so fucking mad at you. I’m saying that’s a fucking _example_ of the _shit you do_ —”

“You know what? You have not brought this up with me at all — before now. And now you’re just _laying into me_ all fucking random —”

“Dude!” Yara says, eyes widening. “I actually tell you this, _all the time!_ Grey! This is another one of the many things I hate about you. You don’t fucking _hear_ people unless they are fucking _yelling_ at you! I am _constantly_ telling you to please leave ten minutes earlier and to _please_ factor in the time that it takes to park. I am constantly asking you to —”

“If I’m such a terrible person, why the fuck are you even friends with me!”

“Oh my _God!”_ Yara says derisively. “You are so _dramatic!_ I give you some feedback on your shittiness, and you respond by trying to throw our friendship into the _garbage!”_

 

 

  
Drogo, Dany, and Missy try to have a side conversation while Grey and Yara are fighting, but it is difficult because they are distracting. But the three of them agree that Yara and Grey are both real dramatic.

There’s an awkward lull as the server nervously comes back to take down their food orders. Grey hasn’t even gotten a chance to look at the menu and starts flipping the page a few times over and over, trying to speed-read. Yara becomes extra pissed because his priorities are always fucked. And she’s actually starving because she didn’t have a substantial dinner the night before — she’s gained a few, and she’s trying to get her fat ass under control — so her hunger is actually making her extra irritable.

Grey resentfully orders a frou frou waffle, because he’s being rushed. He does it to obliquely punish Yara because everyone knows he doesn’t like sweet things, and he definitely does not like fucking dessert for a meal. So he hopes she enjoys her salad and fucking chokes to death on it.

“Bud,” Drogo says — far too late because the server has already left. “Are you sure you want to eat sugar and carbs for lunch?”

“I didn’t pick _this fucking restaurant,”_ Grey says crankily.

“Okay,” Drogo says patiently. Drogo picked this restaurant. Because of location and the fact that it takes reservations at this time of day. “Do you wanna split with me? I got a ham and veggie scramble. There’s a lot of protein in that.”

“I fucking _hate_ wet-cured ham.”

“Okay,” Drogo says, “I hear you. But maybe you can eat around it?”

“No. Because the fucking wet ham flavor _permeates_ through _everything.”_

 

 

  
Drogo watches with a sickening feeling in his stomach as a fat waffle gets dropped in front of Grey, and Grey starts dumping a bunch of melted butter and syrup over mascarpone cheese and a berry compote. It’s fucking death on a plate and this asshole does not even fucking _give_ a _shit_ about _himself._

As Grey starts shoving carbs and fat and sugar and calories into his face, Drogo looks over at Dany, who is aware of the display. And Drogo silently asks her — if not now, then when?

“Grey,” Dany says, clearing her throat. She ordered an egg white omelette with nothing on it, not even salt. She is eating white eggs and drinking water. “I, of all people, understand the emotional pull of food —”

“What?” Grey says, already kind of sneering. He’s so fucking fed up with people getting on his fucking ass for smallass shit. It is especially fucking annoying because he might be dying soon so this shit is just fucking petty as fuck to him.

“Bud,” Drogo says, trying to be delicate. “You’ve put on a few. Like, you gained a little bit of weight. You’ve noticed it, right?”

Grey’s face slackens and he drops his fork. It hits his plate with an audible, metallic clink. He says, “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“Buddy, we’re just concerned about you,” Drogo says. “You’ve been doing a lot of emotional eating.”

“I am so _fucking sorry_ you have to cast your eyes on my disgustingly ugly body,” Grey snipes. “What a fucking inconvenience it must be for you.”

It is an alarming overstatement. Dany kind of looks at him like, what the fuck? Drogo is looking at him with all of the empathy in the entire world — and it is way too fucking much. Yara blessedly refuses to make eye contact with him, so he doesn’t have to fucking read the feelings on her face and then feel bad about that, too.

After a pause that lasts entirely too long and is too tense, Drogo clears his throat and delicately says, “It’s more that we are concerned about your health.”

“No you’re not,” Grey volleys back. “You don’t know the fucking state of my health at all. You just don’t want to fucking _look at me.”_

“Bud — that is not it at all.”

“Guys,” Missy cuts in. “Can we just not talk about this right now? Like, he knows he’s gained weight. It's already frustrating. We don’t have to put him on blast for it.”

“We’re putting _him_ on blast?” Yara says, finally speaking again. “That’s crazy that you say that because in the last five minutes, he’s been yelling and swearing and pushing anger and just being pissy as fuck while Drogo’s been super nice and patient — but yeah, by all means. Let’s continue to tiptoe around Grey’s feelings _forever._ This is actually so _classic,_ Missy. What you just said was so _classic_ and so _you.”_

 

 

  
Missy gets where Yara is coming from — like, she understands why Yara is saying what she is saying. Missy’s memory is far-reaching and sometimes it is very comprehensive because she is a person that is prone to fixation and feelings of guilt.

But it stings all the same. And she’s emotional today, so the feelings are overwhelming. It feels like nothing is going right and nothing is okay. She reaches down to pick up her napkin so that she can dab her eyes with it.

 

 

  
“It would be great if you didn’t talk to her like that,” Grey says to Yara. “You can talk to me like that, because I don’t give a fuck. But she didn’t do anything to you, okay?”

And to be fair, Yara already feels awful.

Missy can’t exactly predict where he’s going to go with this — but she has an idea that it will generally be very emotional, kind of petty, and really angry. She lays her hand of his forearm, rubbing it, and she tries to stave it off by saying, “Grey, _don’t.”_

 _“You_ wanted me to tell them,” he angrily says to her. “I feel backed into a fucking corner right now. I feel like I don’t even have a fucking _choice.”_

She pleadingly says, “Grey, come on. You don’t have to be mean about it.”

 

 

  
He really only wanted to tell Drogo — and certainly not right this second. He figures that Drogo would just blab to Dany like Drogo always fucking does, which would save Grey the trouble of having a fucking emotional conversation with her. And he doesn’t think Yara deserves to know jackshit about him because he’s pissed at her, and he thinks that she is a fucking jackass. But he keeps his voice steady and controlled and even as he forces himself to state the facts.

He tells them that of course he has noticed his weight gain. It is fucking terrible because he feels so fucking ugly again. He watches at Drogo flinches over that — and he stops Drogo as Drogo tries to talk over him and pepper assurances that he is not ugly. Grey still does not understand how a person who looks like Drogo would even find it within himself to empathize on this front. Like, it just doesn’t make sense to him, and this is why Grey did not tell Drogo about this the first time around.

Grey just bluntly lays it down. He tells them that he’s worried that his tumor is back. He has low energy levels. His brain is a fucking mess. He can’t even fucking _think straight_ sometimes. And his body has changed for the worst.

 

 

  
Dany starts seeking out information. Missandei has to answer for Grey because he’s done talking for now. Missandei said that he definitely has not gone to a doctor yet. And this is generally a really fresh, really new fear. She says the plan is to make an appointment with his doctor as soon as he can.

Dany manages her own fears by coldly denying them. She sounds a little dismissive as she says, “You are probably fine. You are probably just gaining weight because you eat way too much. You need to see a doctor. You need to stop working yourself up like this. It is idiotic.”

This is something Grey actually responds really well to. He has a far harder time with Missandei’s tears. To Dany, he says, “I know. You’re right.” Then, to Drogo, he says, “We should probably talk about work and what will happen if —”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” Drogo says. “No.”

“No?”

“I’m not having any sort of conversation with you about succession plans before I hear it from a fucking _doctor,”_ Drogo says. He is upset. He can’t eat his fucking egg scramble now. He says, “You’re fine. You’re just getting fat.” And then he shakes his head. He says, “What the fuck, man.”

“What?”

“I didn’t expect to be dealing with this today!” Drogo snaps. His moods are shifting really fast and randomly, as he fights to get his bearings. He blinks rapidly and says, “I really think that my mom will die before I have to watch you die.”

“Well, you’re older than me,” Grey says reasonably. “If I get to live out the rest of my natural life, it’s possible that you’d die before me.”

“I’m like, only five years older than you are. And your diet is shitty.” Drogo clears his throat with a loud cough. “Goddammit.”

 

 

  
They eat the rest of their meal in relative silence. He is only good at feeling anger and self-righteous defensiveness. He’s not good at much else. So he just feels angry that he has to deal with this today. He feels angry that he has to deal with this at all. He feels angry that he’s eating a fucking waffle. He makes an angry comment to them — directed at no one in particular. He just says that now they get it, don’t they? It doesn’t matter what the fuck he eats because the expiration date might be coming up sooner rather than later. They all kind of flinch and nobody laughs.

He feels angry that his body is shit. He feels angry that he didn’t even get one last nice day with anybody — not with Missandei, not with Drogo, not with Dany, not with Yara — before this shit came up and fucked with his life. He feels angry that it all feels different this time around. Last time, he only told Tyrion to start. And Tyrion was a work colleague doing him a favor by taking him to his surgery. If he had died then, he would’ve been just a bizarre story for Tyrion to tell to the rest of their colleagues.

Now, it feels starkly different — and he’s not sure the gains he has made have been worth it. Because it feels fucking terrible to have so many people so fucking emotionally invested in this fucking shit. It’s bad enough for him to deal with it himself, but to also have Missandei deal with it is fucking awful and unfair to her. She didn’t sign up for this.

He thinks that Yara is still ticked with him, but is unable to express it because now the possibility of him dying is on the table, and she’d look like a massive asshole if she keeps digging at him after the confession.

So it’s surprising to him when, after lunch, they go to say goodbye to each other and she grabs onto him tightly — he starts to end the hug only to feel her holding on — and he sighs and wraps his arms around her tighter.

She says, “I’m sorry. And I love you.”

He mutters, “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

 

 

 

 


	7. Yara gets a haircut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yara goes about her day after the bomb that Grey dropped. Grey and Missandei have some real talk during sexy times.

 

 

 

Yara has a hair appointment scheduled right after lunch, an appointment that’s been on the books for months now. She hesitates and her steps stutter a little bit as she overhears Drogo ask Grey if Grey is feeling up for some company for the rest of the day. Grey says, “Oh, it’s okay. I kind of just feel like carrying on like everything is normal.”

Drogo apparently needs clarification. He asks, “So, you don’t want company?”

“Ah, no,” Grey says softly. “It’s okay.”

 

 

  
She behaves a bit like a cliche. She originally has these plans to just have her shoulder length hair trimmed, but she ends up staring at her own reflection in the mirror as she sits in her stylist’s chair. And then Yara swings her eyes up at Bethany through the glass. She momentarily doesn’t know how to articulate the words — the syllables stop up in her throat.

Then she says, “Let’s cut it off.”

If Bethany is fazed, she does not show it. She says, “How much?”

 

 

  
Her townhouse is empty when she gets home. She drops her keys down into the glass bowl by her door, and then she pulls off the strap of her bag and places it on a hook over her keys. After nudging her shoes off, she silently pads her sore feet up to her bedroom.

There, she’s actually shocked when she catches a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror. She does this doubletake and then pauses to stare at herself. Her eyes look blank and her face is expressionless. She doesn’t recognize the hair and she doesn’t altogether feel like she’s looking back at herself.

She eases herself onto her bed and scoots back a little bit, pulling her phone along. After crossing her legs underneath her body, she unlocks her phone with a fingerprint and navigates to an app with a red circle for a logo.

She pulls in a deep breath as she closes her eyes and the soft sounds of rolling waves drifts out from her phone’s speakers.

Yara originally wrote off meditation as fake pseudoscience for delicate flowers that wilt upon the slightest bit of provocation. But then she started breaking a little bit under the pressures of her life — her dad’s anger with Theon and sometimes her, when her dad forgets to be angry with Theon — Theon’s unending depression, anxiety, fears, and refusal to try sometimes — the impossible deadlines at work and the many impossible-to-please people that she constantly has to answer to — the possibility that she might die alone because there is just something deficient inside of her that prevents her from loving honestly. She knew the stress was getting to her, not because she has become very short-tempered and easy to offend. She only started to make these connections because of the insomnia. Sometimes it’s impossible to sleep because she just lays awake at night, just so preoccupied with this sense of dread and this pervasive self-loathing. She loathes her own weaknesses and shortcomings. The fact that she has not been sleeping well has resulted in really fucking stupid mistakes at work. She has been chewed out and just lambasted lately for the dumbest shit.

She went to her doctor to get drugs for the insomnia. Her doctor prescribed a month’s worth of Ambien and warned her that it can be habit-forming. Her doctor talked over her lifestyle with her. The words self care and meditation came up — which are things that, based on Yara’s upbringing — she immediately rejected. That shit is for soft-ass people who cannot manage their first-world lives. That shit is for people who invent problems because they are multi-millionaires who like to prance around pretending that it’s talent and not family name that matters in their careers.

But afterward, she mentioned the visit to Obara, who promptly corrected her and told her that meditation is actually based on science. It can change the brain. Obara defiantly said that she meditates. Does Yara think she’s a soft-ass idiot, too?

So Yara downloaded an app on her phone.

 

 

  
He drove to lunch, so he has to drive her back to her place. When they are within five minutes of her building, Missandei finally gets up the nerve to say, “Do you want to come up for a bit, or do you need space?” This takes courage because she really, really does not want to let him out of her sight.

He says, “I’ll come up.”

 

 

  
In her apartment, he hugs her from behind and he kisses her temple after turning the water that goes to her faucet back on. She tests the faucet a few times, as he softly whispers to her that he can probably install a new faucet for her, if that one is just busted or if she just wants an upgrade. There’s a bit of a gurgle noise that she cannot tell is new or just something she has never noticed before.

She spins around in his arms. His hands drift down to her hips, holding her in place as he leans forward and slowly kisses her with his eyes half open. He kisses her with just his lips. He kind of imagines doing this into the future, with some regularity. He kind of also projects backwards into the past, and there is this sense of deja vu, as he remembers what it used to feel like, being with her. He wonders if he wasted some of his life — during those years when he was so angry with her for leaving.

He says, “I’m glad we’re together.”

She kisses him again, softly and carefully, as she tears up again. She blinks them back and she stares back at him, as she says, “I’m super happy we’re together, too.”

“Hey, I never said I’m super happy,” he says, correcting her. He’s smiling to let her know he’s just messing around with her. “I said I’m glad.”

“Do I make you happy, though?” she says, just pushing pure earnestness at him.

He leans into her. He pulls her tightly against his body with his hands on her hips. He presses the tip of his nose into her cheekbone, as he stares at her. She’s so close that she is blurry. He says, “You know the answer to that. You know you make me happy.”

“I don’t really know,” she says. “I just hope I do. And I think I do. And I try to.”

 

 

  
He generally leads her back into the bedroom as he kisses her — deeper than the kisses in the kitchen. He holds her face in both of his hands and he pushes all of the terrible thoughts as best as he can out of his mind. He doesn’t let himself think about work or about his health or about the future or even about the past. He kind of commits himself to the present moment as he pushes her down onto her bed.

Her hand reaches around to grab the hem of his shirt, pulling it off. He quietly tells her that he likes the feel of her taking off his clothes, because usually — he either has to take off his own clothes, or he’s taking off her, or he’s taking off both of theirs — in his eagerness.

She makes a mental note of it — to take off his clothes more often.

She catches this expression flicker over his face when he looks down at himself. It’s an expression of weariness and perhaps of general anger and dissatisfaction. It kind of makes her heart hurt — and she tells him out loud that she never feels about him the way that he sometimes feels about himself. She tells him that she really, really likes his body.

“Like?” he says, voice low.

“Love,” she says immediately, amending the words. “I love your body.”

He says, “I feel ridiculously needy right now,” looking up at the ceiling to avoid looking at her face.

“I think it’s really sweet,” she confesses. She thinks that this is the most vulnerable and open he’s been with her in a really, really long time.

 

 

  
The sex is really slow, lasts a really long time, and is really, really amazing. Maybe he would not qualify it as amazing, but she does — because she gets to hold onto him and she gets to feel enveloped by him and she gets to talk to him in a way that they haven’t been able to in also a really, really long time.

In the cocoon of her comforter, as he exhales softly and drags himself out of her before slowly pushing back in — he tells her that he thinks he’s undeserving like, all of the time. He says that he’s probably undeserving of her, because she’s just great — patient and giving and caring and just fucking selfless sometimes — and he is a mess of defensiveness and self-sabotage. He tells her that he knows that it’s unfair for her sometimes. He tells her that sometimes he feels like all he does is take from her without giving back. He tells her he feels bad about it. He tells her it’s cyclical and it builds on itself, because the worse he feels and the more aware of it he is — the more he pulls away. Because it’s like he wants to give her better reasons to leave again. It’s like he can’t get better, and it’s terrible because she will find out soon enough — if she doesn’t already know.

He says, “I’m sorry. Sometimes, I just can’t stop myself from doing what I end up doing. And sometimes I just can’t stop myself from ruining things.”

She’s crying. Her crying is very demonstrative, but largely silent. Her face is red and wet, and she grasps tighter onto his shoulders. It’s more than a little bit trippy to hear him acknowledge what she has long suspected.

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” he says. “I know I made it seem like I’d go ballistic if you ever left again — I know I really was all about that messaging. But I’m an asshole. And . . . I know that you didn’t sign up for this. Like, you didn’t sign up to be in a relationship with someone who might be terminally ill. We’ve been together two weeks. No one would blame you, if — if you left because this totally was not what you signed up for.”

 

 

  
The thought of her leaving him or of him leaving her by dying is one of those loaded and devastating things — and just the thought of it starts breaking her heart.

The sex slows down until he just comes to a full-on stop. He says, “Missandei, I cannot have sex with you like this.” He’s still inside of her, but he drops himself down and presses his face into the pillow. His weight is on top of her. His mouth is breathing hot air into her cheek. And she’s sweating and crying underneath him. He says, “This seems like torture for you. This is exactly the sex of my nightmares, the nightmares I had back when I was still a virgin.”

That makes her break out into a silent laugh — a momentary beacon of light as she tightens her thighs around his hips. She says, “I’m sorry.” She means for all of the crying. She also says, “Don’t stop.” And then she says, “Do you want me to be on top?”

“So you can rain tears and snot down on my face?” he says dryly. He’s trying to make her keep laughing. “No thanks.”

 

 

  
She has him resume sex. He tells her he’s a bit soft, but he has faith it’ll come back. She tells him that he’s so fucking sweet and so fucking cute and so fucking intuitive sometimes — as she touches his face and cups his cheek in her palm. She also tells him that he breaks her heart and he is ridiculous. She will not leave him voluntarily. She actually _did_ sign up for this. She signed up for _everything._ She tells him that she’s in this to win this.

That makes him laugh a little bit. And then he says, “Let’s get real here. What if I’m dying?” He needs this. He’s an excessively pragmatic person that often verges on pessimistic. He does not like to pretend that bad things are not happening. He likes to actually play what-if scenarios, imagining the worst things possible. A lot of times, this has served him well in the past.

Her aching eyes blur a bit as fresh, hot tears push out. This is a terrible game. She says, “Okay, what if you’re dying? How would you want to proceed?”

“I would like to set up the studio so that all of the employees are taken care of. I would like for my death to not be disruptive —”

She already doesn’t like how he is approaching death. She says, “Grey —”

“Babe, just let me talk for a second here.”

“Okay.”

“I think you should take over for me — like, it makes sense. There’s no one else but you who could and should do it. You and Drogo would make sure operations don’t get disrupted. But of course, you can’t keep your existing shares and then get mine on top of it, because that would make you majority owner, and that’s not fair to Drogo. So I think we’d need to talk to the lawyer and divest portions of my shares to both you and Drogo, so that you guys end up fifty-fifty.”

 

 

  
After about five minutes of his rambling — he’s talking about his apartment and his car and all his money and bequeathing a majority of it to some sort of trust for these charities in the Summer Isles — and also giving a smaller portion of it directly to her. She protests this because he’s so fucking dark and masochistic sometimes, and she doesn’t want to take his money if he’s not even with her anymore — but he tells her that he wants her to take it. He wants to take care of her. He would like to do so in person for a long time, but if he’s dead, then he’d like some vestige of himself — his money — to take care of her instead.

She says, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She says, “This is making me sad.”

 

 

  
The sex that started out amazing basically fizzles out. She’s sobbing underneath him and the sight of her distraught face really kills his sex drive and sucks up all of the arousal. She tries to get him to just finish inside of her by trying to thrust up at him, but he kisses her swollen lips and he tells her that it’s totally fine. He can live without finishing.

He’s already soft as he pulls out of her and pulls off the condom.

 

 

  
She holds his hand under the covers and squeezes their sweaty, sticky fingers together. She asks him, “Do you remember when you were in Qohor and I was here, and we were missing each other so much?”

“Yeah,” he says, staring up at the ceiling. “I remember that.”

“I think the thing that made missing you bearable was the promise that once you came back, we’d finally be able to start planning the rest of our lives together. We were going to share a bank account together and everything.”

“Yeah.”

“But then I got a job offer.”

“Right.”

“And we never really got to start planning.”

“Right.”

“That sucked.”

“Yeah, Missandei. It _did.”_

“I want to plan something with you. I want to get to have that — with you.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Do you want to get married?”

“What the fuck? Like, right now? To you? Are you proposing?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. But I really like the sound of panic in your voice. I meant, at all — this is one of the things we have never talked about with each other. Are you a person that wants to be married?”

He exhales. He says, “I used to. With you.”

“But not anymore?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it at all. I’m still getting used to having you back in my life.”

 

 

  
She meets Obara at the theater about fifteen minutes early. Obara is in a good mood and is smiling as she comes in for a hug. She has already purchased tickets and flashes them at Yara, right before Yara starts making a move for the ticket counter. Yara is in a bit of a daze and so she doesn’t enthusiastically express appreciation. She just dully says, “Oh, thanks.”

Obara is grasping onto Yara’s biceps as she looks Yara over. She says, “Your hair looks fucking _awesome.”_

Yara has actually forgotten she had gotten a haircut. She says, “Ah, thanks.”

 

 

  
The movie is a comedy, but Yara inexplicably tears up during inappropriate moments. It’s because the theater is dark and she can get away with it, and there are a lot of people around them laughing — and she feels pretty shitty and probably should’ve cancelled this excursion with Obara.

After the movie, Obara wants to go somewhere and chat — because she always wants to dissect movies. She asks Yara if Yara wants to grab dinner.

Yara can’t think of a good reason to say no, so she agrees. They go eat sushi because Yara’s one request is that she wants to eat stuff that is reasonably healthy.

Yara thinks she’s doing a real bang-up job being normal and not letting on that she is just a total mess inside, but Obara dispels that myth by leaning over a clean dinner plate and saying, “Hey, are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”

 

 

  
Dinner ends swiftly, because Yara starts getting emotional and she starts tearing up in public. She hates crying as it is, and it’s terrible to cry in front of other people. So she and Obara rush through dinner because of this. Obara works really hard to get Yara’s attention away from whatever it is that is bringing down her friend. She talks a lot about the movie, she talks a lot about random funny stuff she has read and seen and heard, and she also exaggeratedly talks a lot about her sisters and the wacky stuff they’ve gotten themselves into.

They drove separately — and after Yara lamely says that Theon is at home — responding to Obara’s question of whether or not Yara feels like a nightcap at her place or somewhere else — Obara decides for the both of them to meet at Obara’s apartment.

In Obara’s apartment, on her couch, Yara holds a scorching hot cup of tea and accepts a box of tissues from Obara’s outstretched hand — and she just kind of starts losing it. She sees Obara’s expression frowning down at her.

Yara says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can tell you exactly what’s going on. It’s not really my secret to tell.”

“You don’t have to tell me the dirty details about anything,” Obara says soothingly, sitting down next to Yara with her own cup of tea. “We can just sit here.”

“That’s so weird. Just sit here quietly as I cry like a _fucking girl?”_

“I’m a good sounding board. I mean, I’ve done this once or twice or a million times before — with Missandei,” Obara says, cracking a smile. “So I’m kind of pro at it.”

“Oh, that’s funny,” Yara says hollowly. It’s funny because Missandei exclusively cries over Grey. And Yara is also crying over Grey right now, too. It is fucking hilarious.

She takes in a deep breath, and then she starts talking. The first thing she says is, “My brother almost died.”

 

 

  
They talk for a long time — until they both start yawning and fighting to stay awake. Yara talks about how she never really fully processed what happened to her brother. Greyjoys are just really good at suppressing their feelings and ignoring things until people get fed up and leave. Obara talks about how she can sort of relate to that feeling — in bits and pieces. She tends to think that she can garner her dad’s attention and his approval if she were more masculine. She and Yara have this in common — a psychotic need to seek out the approval of their dastardly fathers.

Yara also talks about their friends. She tiptoes around things and says a lot of stuff really vaguely. And then she talks about how Grey is such an unlikely friend — but he is one of her very best friends. And the fact that she starts to cry when she says this basically clues Obara in on a few things. Obara figures out that everything is orbiting around Grey — as it often does. She resists making a joke and asking Yara, again, why everyone is so fucking obsessed with that weirdo. Instead she pretends she didn’t notice what she noticed, and she just plainly says that friends are sometimes like family.

After hours of talking, Obara starts to drift off to sleep, Yara stands up to mutely take their cups to the kitchen sink.

She steps into her shoes back in the living room and shrugs into her jacket. She stands over Obara’s sleeping form — still upright — and nudges Obara’s shoulder a little bit. Obara will regret sleeping on the couch come morning, so this is why Yara grabs Obara’s hand and starts tugging. She says, “Come on, babe. Let’s get you to bed.”

It’s not meant to sound any which way other than familiar and kind. But Obara sleepily blinks her eyes open. She looks up at Yara for a moment. She says, “Are you taking me to bed?”

Yara barks out, _“What!”_ She’s _immediately_ nervous.

And then Obara laughs. The tension dissipates as Obara heaves herself up into standing position with the help of Yara’s hand. She lets go of it before she stretches as she stands to her full height. And she gives Yara a warm hug goodbye. She says, “Text me when you get home so I know you made it, okay?” 

 

 

 


	8. Does Grey love Missy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany displays some serious self-awareness, and Missy gets drunk and puts her heart on a platter for Grey to pound down with his fist. Just normal stuff.

 

 

  
Dany is annoyed by how melodramatic and sensitive Drogo is. She gets sick and tired of his obsessive need to talk about everything all the time. She is fixated on the fact that he projects out this image of alpha masculinity out to the world, and he’s just this fucking basketcase at home. She resents that the rest of the world gets his best and bravest face, and she just gets his neuroses and insecurities. She resents that she has to fight to get respect, and he doesn’t. She is sick and tired of going to events when him and watching other men nudge elbows with him as they spout cliches about whether or not she has been harassing him into putting a ring on it. She is sick and tired of watching Drogo laugh like he’s saying, oh, bitches be wanting babies, am I right! — before he turns to her under the cover of darkness when they are alone and asks her if she thinks his talent and abilities still can stand to grow — or if she just thinks he’s too old to improve much more.

These are the facts: Not one medical professional has confirmed that Grey is sick. His weight gain can easily be explained. He has been eating like a fucking fat monster. She, of all people, knows the challenges of maintaining weight as one gets older.

Having been subjected to the sadistic wolf-crying whims of her brother growing up, Dany does like to worry unless there is something to worry about. Viserys was and is narcissistic and likes to invent ways to draw more and more focus onto himself, whether through imagined ailments or through paranoid inventions about how so-and-so is out to get him because he is so important. She has a few embarrassing stories where she fell for his shit real hard in her youth and ended up caring too much about him only to get her empathy thrown back into her face and made to feel a fool over it.

As a result, she has progressively gotten more and more jaded and skeptical, which has unfortunately — or fortunately — spilled over to other areas of her life. She gives few shits about Drogo’s hysterical feelings, and she will not bother worrying about Grey until it is confirmed that there is something medically wrong with him.

“Oh my God, can you seriously just fucking _knock this shit off?”_ she says, pointing her brittleness at Drogo.

He freezes, with a beer bottle held up halfway to his mouth. He’s slouching in his leather armchair with his bare feet up on his coffee table. He says, “I am literally sitting here in fucking silence doing _nothing to you._ You’re already chewing me out for no reason.”

“I can _hear_ you thinking from all the way over here!” she snaps.

His jaw kind of drops — because even though they’ve known each other for many years and have been together for multiple years — she still manages to surprise the fuck out of him sometimes. He says, “I don’t think this is something reasonable you can get mad at me for.”

“You’re hysterical!” she accuses.

 _“You_ are fucking _hysterical!”_ he throws back. “I’m sitting here minding my own fucking business, enjoying my beer as I quietly think about Grey dying young — harming fucking _nobody_ with my thoughts. And you are _projecting_ all of your shit onto me.”

He is so incisively accurate — and she realizes this — that she has nothing to say back to him.

She goes to the closet to pull her jacket off of a hanger. She silently shoves her arms into the sleeves and shrugs into the garment, pulling the ends of her hair out from the collar before she starts buttoning up. She has decided that she just needs space, and she just needs alone time. It’s not normal or comfortable for her to commiserate with company.

Drogo thinks she’s being totally whack and is behaving in a way that is counterintuitive to her expressed desires and wants. She generally doesn’t want him to react emotionally or loudly — she generally dislikes his emotional explosiveness and impulsivity — so he tries to keep fairly quiet when he is around her — and she is just being a fucking crazy bitch about everything right now because she’s an idiot with her own feelings.

He refrains from saying all of this, because he knows it’s really not a great time to say this to her. He just despondently watches her prepare to leave — and he sees her flaws laid out so clearly in the moment. She is not even any better than he is, when it comes to this human shit.

As she pulls her purse strap over her shoulder and pulls her keys out of the bag, he says, “Later, babe. Let me know what you get up to later tonight.”

“Yeah, sure,” she mutters, hyper-focused on her keys. “Maybe dinner?”

“Sure.”

He tilts his face up to hers as she walks over and leans down to kiss him goodbye.

 

 

  
Missandei is not much of a drinker outside of the influence of peer pressure, but she decides that a drink will help loosen some of her anxiety. She gets out of bed to pull on some clothes — he curiously mirrors and follows her actions — he follows her into the kitchen. She cinches her oversized sweater tighter around her body as she uncorks a bottle of red wine from her dinner party stash and pours herself a healthy glass.

She points the neck to him. She asks, “You want some?”

“Sure.”

 

 

  
The wine is too chilled, but she doesn’t wait for it to warm up in her hands before she starts glugging. She runs the back of her hand across her lips before setting the glass back down to her counter. With her arms hugging her own body, she looks at him — he’s on the other side of the island — and she thinks that she has nothing to lose really, besides him. She has noticed that he has stayed with her — all day. He has not prioritized his need for space and distance today. So she says, “Do you know what this all kind of reminds me off?”

“What?”

“It reminds me a little of that period right after we knew I was leaving,” she says. “During that time, we fought really hard to hold onto each other, because we were afraid that the end was near.” She kind of lets a grim smile slip out. She says, “We had a lot of sex. We talked a lot. We tried to fit in a lot of relationship in a finite amount of time.”

He nods. He tries not to tense up. He says, “Yeah. I remember that. What’s your point?”

She picks up her wine glass again. “I don’t have one. It’s just an observation. Maybe the observation is that history is cyclical.”

“But this time, I am the one leaving,” he says flatly. He feels anger simmering up inside of him. She has neglected to point out that a clear difference between him and her is that he generally never leaves by choice. He leaves because he is forced to. She left by choice. There’s a difference, and she can’t fucking claim victimhood here and compare it to him and his experiences and how it felt when she chose her job over him.

She shrugs, before tilting her wine glass back and gulping down the rest of it.

 

 

  
Missy can actually see him start to boil. His face is always forcefully blank and impassive in these moments, but she can see it in his eyes. And she’s honestly not trying to trigger him, but she is kind of distracted by her own grief. So there’s a large chunk of her that just does not give enough of a shit to be delicate. He’s never completely right in how he thinks, either. He’s always a little bit wrong in how he assesses _them._

She’s actually just using his own macabre vocabulary — talking under the assumption that the worst is true, planning for an end that may actually be wildly unrealistic and may never come to fruition. But he doesn’t like it because he’s not in control of the conversation. This is a thing about him, and it’s always been an obstacle for them. And she’s currently over it.

She says, “Say you are hypothetically dying, and we don’t have a very long time with each other. You want me to have your money and your work because you want to take care of me and your employees financially from the grave — which, thank you very much, that’s very nice and paternalistic —”

“Oh my _God_ —”

She ignores his hard and angry blurt. She says, “What about the rest of it? What about me?”

“What _about_ you?” He shakes his head — he constantly says shit like an asshole on autopilot, and it’s fucking annoying. “I mean, what are you referring to specifically?”

She cuts eye contact to blink at the half-full bottle of wine. She grabs it and wrenches the cork off. “Do I get a say in this? Or is this just your thing?” She pretty much pours the rest of the bottle into her glass.

“Oh my God.” He’s ticked because he doesn’t like that she’s being self-righteous, and he doesn’t like that she is hijacking his death by making it all about her.

“We actually don’t _know_ if you’re dying!” she snaps — kind of reading his mind. She sucks down another healthy swallow of wine. She smacks her lips as she says, “This is all a super dark hypothetical game right now, and you still are making up all the rules and regulations. Like, when is it _my turn_ to play?”

 

 

  
At a certain point, Grey realizes that she is kind of drunk, and she is kind of being a belligerent drunk. Once he realizes this, a lot of his defensiveness falls by the wayside, because he don’t really fuck that much with drunkards. He don’t fuck much with Jaime when Jaime is drunk. He don’t mess with Drogo when Drogo’s been drinking. Drunk people are frustratingly inconsistent and random.

So he generally treats Missandei like she’s a little mentally incapacitated. He snatches away the box of crackers that she rips open, amid a fair bit of protest. He observes that it’s been hours since they last ate — like, it’s dinner time. He tells her that she should eat a proper meal.

She actually says to him, “You are constantly telling me what to do and sometimes I agree with what you are saying, but sometimes it’s really annoying that you don’t ask me things. When do _I_ get to tell _you_ what to do?”

He gathers up her and her shit — her wallet and purse and her keys — and he pushes them all toward the front door. He says, “Really am loving the unfiltered honesty right now.”

 

 

  
In his car, he turns to her and he deliberately asks her something. He asks her if she would like to eat out at a restaurant or if she would prefer to go buy groceries and make food back at her place. He’s giving her options and soliciting her thoughts because he hears her. He understands that he’s bossy with her a lot of the time. It’s because it’s hard for him to separate his personal self from his work self. He just doesn’t always think about how he’s coming across sometimes.

She’s buzzed, so she generally does not recognize the minute gesture on his part — which is just great because he loves it when his efforts go unacknowledged. She just looks back at him as tears fill up in her eyes — and she starts to cry again as she says, “I love you, Grey. I love you so much.”

He patiently says, “Missandei — you know that —”

“Don’t,” she cuts in. “Don’t say it when you think you’re dying.”

What a nutty bitch. “You actually don’t know what I was going to say!” he exclaims, trying to maintain a smile, trying to keep it relatively light. “I _wasn’t_ going to say that I love you. I was actually going to say that I care a lot about you.”

“Oh.”

He flicks the underside of her chin as he tries not to laugh, then he goes to start up the car. “So, grocery store or restaurant? And which grocery store or restaurant? Do you want to pull up some options on your phone? Do you want to GPS me to there? This is exactly why I fucking hate asking people things and giving them options, by the way. It’s very inefficient.”

“Grey, do you remember when you called me babe? In bed? Like, earlier today? Well, I do. And I liked it. Can you call me babe again? I’ve missed that. You used to call me that all the time. I’m being explicit, see? And I want to go to a grocery store.”

“Oh my God,” he mutters, as he sways forward and lightly knocks his forehead into his steering wheel. And then he starts laughing, right into the column.

 

 

  
She passionately tells him that she wants to push the cart — and he completely does not fight her nor does he want to fight her on this. He just steps to the side and gestures for her to just go nuts — have at it.

She starts throwing shit into the cart without rhyme or reason. She’s tossing in bread, various packages that are on sale — like cheeses and corn. She is loading random amounts of produce into bags. He asks her what the fuck she is planning on cooking, but she looks at him like he’s being bossy and controlling again, so he raises his hands and steps away. He’s already doing this mental tally because he can’t help it. This food run is going to be expensive and a lot of the food is probably going to spoil if they don’t eat it all in a hurry. But his overeating may actually be the issue at hand here — so he’s tempted to suggest a more judicious strategy — but then she runs over some shelves and says, “Oh my gosh, I love spam!”

He patiently says, “Babe,” even though it feels completely weird and foreign coming out of his mouth because she hasn’t been this person to him in so long. “What the fuck are you going to do with cheese and corn and potatoes and _spam?_ Do you have a fucking plan here?”

 

 

  
The food _does_ end up costing an arm and a leg. She ends up paying for it because — she said — it is the consequence of shopping while kind of drunk. She steers the shopping cart erratically around the parking lot, trying to spot the car even though she doesn’t remember where they parked it. He watches her just living her life, just going about it with these qualities that are so intrinsically Missandei-like. He’s trying not to constantly laugh at her.

And he thinks that he might fight harder this time around. He will not just succumb to what seems fated. He thinks that he probably owes this to her.

 

 

  
She stores most of the food away, and dinner is actually just these sandwiches that she makes from bread, tomatoes, lettuce, and pan-fried spam. They eat on the couch in front of the TV. She curls her legs up and rests her chin on one of knees as she continues nibbling on the very last corner of her sandwich. She repeats back to him a story about herself that he already knows — but she may have forgotten that she’s already told him.

She tells him that before she learned to properly cook, she generally had to fend for herself and make herself food while her brother was out. She made spam sandwiches because spam was cheap and it stored for a very long time. She’s kind of still a little nostalgic about it these days. She tells him that she used to eat spam sandwiches when she was living in Naath — which was funny because she felt so homesick in a place that was supposed to be her home. But then, she supposes that the meaning of home shifts around. She tells him that she actually had a really hard time making actual Naathi food when she was living there, because she had come to strongly associate Naathi food with him, so it was always kind of depressing as shit to even think about cooking without him.

So the last bit is actually completely new information to him. He’s kind of dumbfounded and predictably awkward at absorbing the rawness of the confession. He’s quiet.

She sighs, and she says, “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to live without you again.”

 

 

  
Since they are just telling each other random sad secrets and shit, he tells her that, years ago, he actually rejected a really cool job offer for her — for them. This is not really information that he keeps in his back pocket, and it’s not something he thinks about very much. He just happens to think that it’s probably relevant in this moment.

He tells her that that after Qohor, he turned down a job that would’ve resulted in him doing even more traveling in remote places and being even harder to reach for longer lengths of time. It would’ve been amazing and professionally fulfilling, but he ended up saying no to the opportunity because he didn’t want to be away from her for that long. That decision kind of resulted in him settling down in King’s Landing for good — it kind of led him to where he currently is, even though she didn’t stay in his life.

She says, “Oh my God, I didn’t know that. You never told me this.”

He says, “It would’ve made you feel bad, and I didn’t see the point in that.”

She says, “I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. And he says, “For what? There’s nothing to be sorry for. It was my choice. I don’t regret it. I like my life.”

She says, “I’m sorry that you chose us. And I chose my job.”

“Again, there’s nothing to be sorry for anymore. It ended up working out.”

“Did it though?”

He sighs. He says, “You want to say something. So just say it.”

She swallows. And then pulls in a fortifying breath. And then she says, “Do you love me? Do you even have the capacity to love me right now? Will you ever love me again?”

 

 

  
His face is so hot and tingly — so uncomfortable and so tense. He rubs his hands over his warm cheeks, trying to push out the numbness. And then he gets up and off of the couch to grab himself a glass of water. Her sink is still behaving ambiguously, and the water is fairly chlorinated and thus, kind of unappetizing. But he drinks it anyway.

Standing a fair distance away from her, he tells her that he used to love her a lot. Like, he remembers what he felt like to love her — and it was insane and all-encompassing.

He says, “And I sometimes feel glimmers of that — right now, when we’re together. But —” He pauses.

“But?” she prompts.

“I’m a different person now,” he says. “I’m not exactly that person you used to know. You’re not who you used to be either. And Missandei — I keep telling you — we’ve been together for _two weeks._ I can’t make this progress any faster in myself — especially when I spent so many years forcing myself to feel a certain way about you — forcing myself to forget you. I can’t just flip on a switch and then everything is like how it was.”

 

 

  
It’s like he punched her in the stomach — and it’s stupid because it’s not like she wasn’t completely expecting it. Nothing about what he said is surprising to her. But it still hurts all the same. It hurts in her chest, and it also hurts in her eyes.

She tells him, “This situation fucking blows.”

He says, “Yeah, man. I know.”

She says, “I better have enough time — to make you love me again. You better not be dying.”

He says, “I am probably not. You probably have time.” And then he smiles at her weakly. “Missandei, I honestly care about you a fuckton. I mean, it’s a lot. That’s like — I know it’s not what you want. But it’s not terrible.”

She voices this crazy fear. She asks, “What if you never love me again? Because we’re just different people and the way we are different is just incompatible now?”

“Man — that’s what I’ve been saying. Sort of. That’s why this shit —” He’s gesturing between the two of them, “— is fucking _terrifying._ And that is why I was trying to just be friends with you.”

“I shouldn’t have left,” she says, now just bitter about it all. “I should’ve just stayed. I fucking left and what was it for? For a job that I was eventually fired from. And for a fucking miserable life without you. And now, for this labor-intensive life with you.”

“Yeah, man. I like to make people work.”

“Yeah, it’s probably one of your most defining traits.”

“Yeah, man. You have to be a really confident person to be with me.”

“Yeah, I constantly feel insecure about everything. It’s great.”

“Yeah, that honestly seems like a real bummer.”

“Get over here,” she says, holding her arms out. “I want a cuddle.”

 

 

 

 


	9. Grey is tired of feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missandei wants to shack up in a hurry, and Grey is like, "Uh, I just met you," about it.

 

 

 

He feels like she is trying to cram in months worth of progress into mere days. He is tempted to tell her that it will not work that way. Trust takes time to develop. Comfort takes time to grow. Partnership takes time to build. He didn’t just wake up on the second day after forming a business with Drogo and start sending Drogo texts on the qualities of his morning poop. That took years to build up to. That was perhaps a third year milestone. And Drogo has been with Grey through thick and thin — with an unrelenting consistency.

In contrast she relatively _just_ popped back into his life. It took them a couple of years to move past being just strangers that were kind of angry at each other to semi-friends to fuck buddies to _this_ — a bonafide relationship. Like, it’s been a reasonable pace to go at things, so he doesn’t understand why she is making him feel bad for not pledging his undying love and devotion to her already. He cares about her _so much_. And he is just cautious and careful in how he approaches this, because he wants to be responsible about it, and he wants to give them a good shot at making this work. Is that not fucking _smart?_

After a certain point, he gets real tired of analyzing their relationship to death. He feels like they have spent hours upon hours talking about his feelings and then her feelings and then back to his feelings again. And _then_ she wants to talk about how she feels about his feelings — and he’s like, holy shit, where is the nearest gun so he can blow his brains out instead of waiting for a brain tumor to finish him off?

“That’s not very funny,” she says tightly, with her face pinched into a stink. “I don’t think you are very funny at all.”

“You think I’m joking right now?” he says, making a show of looking around the apartment, presumably for a loaded gun.

 

 

  
She doesn’t find talking about their relationship to be labor intensive at all. He gets all stressed out when they have conversations of substance. He seems like he’d rather just let things be. She finds this approach to be a bit avoidant. She _likes_ talking about their relationship. She thinks it’s fun. She likes telling him about how she currently feels about him and how she felt about him in specific times in the past. She likes remembering him, and she likes tracking the progression of how far they have come and all of the detours they have taken.

She wants to talk about where they are going. She’s just wondering if he thinks he’s just dating her or if he might be thinking he could perhaps build a life with her. She also wants to tell him that it’s completely okay if he doesn’t know yet because sometimes it’s just hard to know.

Love comes easier to her than it does for him. She knows she loves him. She knew it really quickly — both times. It doesn’t feel like a sacrifice for her to tell him she loves him. It feels like a gift, something easy to give. She doesn’t need to compile reasons to convince herself that she loves him. It’s just something she knows in her bones. She doesn’t want him to die. She doesn’t want them to break up. She wants to build a life together. She wants to be a team with him. She wants to be his partner. She wants to wake up with him every day. She wants to go on vacations with him even though she currently has no clue how that could even happen because they all schedule their vacations strategically so that two of them are never gone at the same time — but they can fucking work something out. She wants to celebrate accomplishments with him. She wants to mourn losses with him.

She doesn’t think it’s a good idea to tell him this right now — but she wants to know _when_ she can tell him without him running away because she feels like she has been waiting _years_ for this. And she just wants it so badly at this point. She just doesn’t understand why he doesn’t love her because she loves him _so much_.

“I haven’t been back to my apartment in more than a day,” he tells her, running the pads of his fingers over his bottom lip.

“Oh, so do you wanna wait for me to go and pack a bag or do you wanna drive separately?” she asks casually. “What is the code to your gate, by the way — and I am _messing_ with you right now, _goddamn_ — that look of terror on your face.”

“I ain’t scared!” he retorts back.

Which doesn’t altogether make sense. So it makes her chuckle a little, as she crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in her dining chair. She says, “It’s cool. We can spend the night apart.”

He clears his throat. He hesitates — probably because he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings at this sensitive juncture in their new relationship. “I just — I just want to change my clothes. And I kind of miss my own bed.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Thanks for your honesty. I totally get that.”

He sighs. “How about . . . you give me an hour or two to decompress at home — and then why don’t you come over and stay with me at my place tonight?”

She opens her mouth — and she’s about to be stupid and tell him that it’s totally cool, and they can totally spend the night apart because she is totally cool and chillaxed. She is totally a cool and unclingy woman.

But there’s a possibility that their time is very finite. It’s possible that time is very precious.

She decides she’s not going to waste time pretending she’s not in this _so deep_ already. She decides she has to be upfront and honest because he will find out sooner or later. She can’t make him love her with good but inauthentic behavior. She says, “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me twice. I want to be with you. I’ll see you in a couple of hours then.”

 

 

  
When he arrives back at home, it almost looks foreign to him — like how it feels when he comes back to his apartment after a trip to the Summer Isles. There’s this herbaceous, floral, and perhaps leathery scent that he’s momentarily struck by — it’s a mishmash of his furniture and the cleaners he uses. The place is quiet, dark, and just neat and orderly. It feels comforting.

He kicks off his shoes, tucks them neatly away in his closet, and he starts stripping in his bedroom, feeling polished hardwood underneath his feet. Missandei’s bedroom is carpeted.

He pushes his body into his shower stall and hits the faucet. He hisses when the cold water flows over him. And then he groans after it quickly heats up, pushing steamy heat into his skin.

His private life isn’t very eventful. He just does this mundane shit when he is alone. He cleans himself. He cleans his apartment. He watches things that he finds arresting. He reads things on his couch. Sometimes he takes aimless walks around the city in the dark. He goes long hours without uttering a word — and he likes that a lot. As much as he really enjoys being with her, there’s still a performance aspect to their new relationship. He feels like he has to be “on,” similar to how he is sometimes “on” at work. He has to entertain her. He has to constantly think of meaningful or interesting shit to say to her. He can’t just fucking sit on his ass and say nothing for a few hours in her presence because that is weird.

So this is why he wants the space. He just wants a couple hours of silence so that he can recharge. He just wants to be alone so that he can think without someone else’s influence.

 

 

  
When he gets out of the shower, he visually assesses his dresser drawers, and he tries to figure out which would be the best one to give her. Height-wise, it’s most convenient for her to have one of the middle ones, but his brain will _not_ allow him to split up his shit in the center like that. That’s just crazy. He doesn’t want to give her the bottommost drawer either because he doesn’t want her to have to crouch in order to access it. Giving her the top drawer has the opposite problem. She’d have to stand on her tiptoes to see into it, which is also impractical.

He tells himself that this is why relationships are fucking hard. There’s always a hidden meaning hardcoded into everything. It’s not like he can give her a laundry basket on the floor. It’s not like he can give her a plastic bag that he hangs on a doorknob. It’s not like he can give her some clothes hangers in his walk-in because what the fuck would she bring over that needs to be hung? Like, dresses?

 

 

  
She gives him two and a half hours of alone time, which does not go unnoticed by him. When she shows up, it’s fairly late, her hair is tied back, and she is yawning into her fist, wearing sweats, and dragging a backpack behind her, which he quickly picks up. It’s unexpectedly light.

Her voice is soft and feminine and very cute as she walks past him, toward his bedroom. She says, “I’m sleepy. I’m going to bed, if that’s okay?”

 

 

  
He shows her her new drawer at his place. He does so like a complete douchebag, with no preamble or lead-in. He just throws open the empty bottom drawer and tells her, “You can put some of your shit in here if you want.”

She looks at the drawer in awe — it’s as if he just showed her a pile of gold. She says, “Oh my gosh, no way!” And then she plops on the ground to get into the guts of the drawer. He cleaned it super well so there’s no dust, but she still shoves her hand into the empty drawer to touch the wood. “Grey! This is so cool! Thank you!”

“It’s basically a wooden box.”

“Yeah, I know how these things work,” she tells him mildly, as she reaches backwards to grab onto a strap of her backpack, dragging it over to her lap. She unzips it and pulls out a bag of toiletries, some lightweight clothing, and also a pair of flats. She starts arranging her things into the drawer with concentration. He thinks that it’s a little weird that she’s putting her shoes into the drawer, but she must think that this is the only place she is allowed to put her stuff.

He says, “Missandei, hey, let’s put your shoes with the rest of the shoes.” He means by the door.

But she says, “In your closet?”

He pauses. He says, “Uh, no. Just at the front.”

“Oh, okay.”

 

 

  
After they brush their teeth, she just intends on giving him a peck goodnight, but there’s something extra there — maybe this intent or this feeling. Because she pauses after they pull away. In the dark, she can hear him breathing. She feels around for his face — she holds his chin in her hand and then she slants her mouth over his again, kissing him a little bit more firmly.

And then there is another pause after she pulls away. She can’t see his face well — or at all — but she can see his shadow. This is how she knows to open her mouth as he dives in deeper. He tastes sweet and minty like his toothpaste. She groans as she grabs onto the back of his head and rolls over onto her back.

 

 

  
He tells her that he’ll help her get to sleep. She starts giggling when his hand dips into her underwear — because it’s kind of hilarious that the pretense of this is getting her to sleep. He barely pauses in his ministrations as he asks her why the hell she is laughing at a time like this.

She asks him if he remembers how hard some aspects of sex used to be — if he remembers how difficult it was to get her to orgasm.

He mutters, “Um, yeah. I remember. It’s hard not to remember. You were so stressed out.” He kisses the side of her face. He says, “I still don’t get why you think my hand down your pants is funny, though.”

“It’s actually not funny at all,” she whispers, suppressing a groan as he smears the evidence of her arousal around so that it’s easier for him to draw slow circles around her clit with his fingers. She quietly says, “It’s actually — it’s very nice.”

“Just very nice?”

She laughs a little bit again. “Yeah. It’s fairly pleasant.”

He’s lying on his side, with his mouth near her ear. He chuckles.

 

 

  
She comes forcefully and quietly — which is just the mood she is currently in. She comes with her teeth biting down on her knuckle as she grinds out a long grunt. She hears his dark and low voice hiss out, “Fuck _yes,”_ and, “Come _on,_ oh _God,”_ into her ear, which just gets to her. There’s this truthfulness and this realness in how he is speaking to her, that it makes her choke up.

She cries out as her entire body convulsives at the tail end of the orgasm — as she turns her head to kiss his mouth all deeply and dirty. She is pretty grateful to him. She is cinches his hand tightly in between her legs as she jams her tongue into his mouth and shoves her hand down his boxers to touch him.

 

 

  
He weirdly keeps trying to convince her to do it quick and dirty and fast — so that she can go to sleep already because he is concerned about keeping her up too late when she has plans in the morning. He doesn’t want her to go about her day sleep-deprived. So he’s treating her having sex with him as a chore. He tries to hurry things up by fucking her fast and vigorously. But she doesn’t feel like getting passively fucked tonight, so she makes him switch positions.

She gets on top and sinks down on him with her heart slamming hard in her chest. She takes her shirt all the way off. She makes him touch her breasts. He kind of whimpers, and she tells him, “I like this because it turns me on when you are turned on. I like it when you act like you will die if you don’t get inside of me.”

“Babe,” he says, grunting and also watching attentively as she plants her hands on his chest and slowly and thoroughly fucks him. “You need to shut your face if you want this to last longer.”

“Yeah, that’s the shit I like,” she says, smiling down at him. “Tell me more about what I need to do with my face. And my body.”

“Turn it around,” he blurts. “I want to see your ass.”

She pauses, blinking at him in surprise. And then she recovers, and she says, “You want to see my fat ass?”

“Oh my God,” he says, throwing his head back and laughing spontaneously. “I forgot I said that to you. That was hilarious.”

 

 

  
It takes a little bit for them to hammer out the logistical detail. She asks him if he means he wants to fuck her doggy style. He tells her he hates that term, and no, not like that. He wants to actually have her still be on top and control the sex — but he would just like for her to face away from him so he doesn’t have to look into her eyes. It’s a joke, and he’s already laughing before he gets to his own punchline. She has her arms crossed over her boobs, and she’s trying not to let him know how cute and hilarious she finds him at this moment. She coughs to cover up a laugh — but he knows that he has won anyway. And then she tells him that he must want a reverse cowgirl situation.

He tells her that these fucking names are awful and he’d prefer not to use them. He just wants to have sex with her on top, facing away from him, in a way where her fat ass is not a hindrance. She tells him that he will not neg his way into great sex as she raises herself up and disconnects from him. He gasps, and she asks him if he misses her already and if he wants her badly. He tells her he wants her pretty badly, because that’s what she wants him to say. And it’s also true.

She has him sit up a little bit. And then she flips around and lets him figure out how to re-enter her. Because she cannot see what is going on. It’s awkward for a few seconds because the angle isn’t right. He tells her to crouch down a little bit more.

Once he jams himself back into her, he looks down and her ass is right there in his lap. The view is great. He gets to touch it. It’s so round.

She adjusts around for a few lengthy seconds, trying to go at this higher, then lower, then in the middle, then back to low. And she can see his feet and the blankets. She rocks backwards — it feels awkward. It doesn’t seem like his dick should be bent this way. She can’t see him. She’s hearing nothing from him. She does this a few more times. Then she says, “What do you think?”

“It’s good.”

“Oh, cool.”

There is a pause. He’s already a very stingy communicator so not being able to see his face and his microexpressions is really great and not at all difficult for her. Then he says, “How’s it for you?”

Her voice goes a little high, which is a sure sign she is about to lie a little bit. “Um, it’s fine.”

She feels him squeeze her butt with his hands. He says, “Just fine?”

She sighs. And in a lower register, she says, “Uh, it bugs me that I can’t see you. The angle is awkward. I don’t know how I’m supposed to maneuver to go up and down, or is it forward and back? This does nothing for me. I think I actually hate this position.”

There is another pause that feels unnerving in its length.

Then she feels him lightly tap her on her hip. He says, “Then turn back around.”

 

 

  
She still is not very adept at climaxing at the same time that he does even though he tries his very best to help her in this respect. She is pretty convinced that coming at the same time with any consistency is a lie that’s been fed to all of them. He keeps progressing far faster than she does at this — and she realizes the irony in this. He keeps getting too close and she’s still too far away, and then they they keep having to stop to let him settle a bit as he keeps running his thumb over her clit. At a point, she’s at a loss on how to direct him toward her orgasm because she’s numbed out down there, and she’s so, so sleepy.

During one of their breaks, she finally says, “I don’t need to finish with you.”

He automatically frowns and says, “No.”

She says, “It’s really cool. I already got off earlier.”

“You know, I don’t need to finish either. We can just . . . cuddle and go to sleep.”

She bursts out laughing. She shakes her head at him. She fondly says, “Babe, you are so fucking adorable sometimes. It kills me sometimes — that other people don’t get to see this side of you. They don’t get to see how open and how willing and how kind and hilarious and fun and sexy you are during sex.”

“It would be so fucking weird if other people saw this side of me,” he mutters, trying to steer them away from her effusive compliments. “Like, how would they even see it? Through a sex tape? Is this going to be your next art piece? Are you going to cross the threshold and just start making porn now?”

“Aw,” she says, bending over him so she can rests her elbows on either side of his head. “Look at you, deflecting nervously. My little anxiety ball.”

He’s about to pull out that old tired thing where he tells her that he doesn’t love the baby voice. He doesn’t love how she talks to him like he’s a cute, fuzzy little puppy. But then she drags her damp body against his front and releases a low groan. His breathing halts for a second as he just pays attention to wet pull — and then the the wet push of her body. He places his tingly hand on her bottom, and he maneuvers her further down on him, a little harder, getting a little deeper inside her. He looks up at her, as her face lightly constricts in tension, as tears fill up in her eyes again. And he whispers, “I think you look so gorgeous right now.”

 

 

 

 


	10. Is Grey's penis okay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy breaks Grey's penis. Feels victorious about it until she shoves her foot into her mouth. Grey continues to stress out a lot whenever someone forces him to talk about anything more substantial than the weather.

 

 

He is so exhausted from sex and also the emotions of the day that he passes out so fully and so comprehensively that the ensuing sleep is coma-like. He doesn’t get up for a glass of water. He doesn’t get up to pee in the middle of the night. He just zonks out and doesn’t wake up again until seven hours have passed and the sun is filtering through his light-diffusing blinds.

He jolts awake when he realizes that he’s not alone in his bed. He wakes up ready to throw a punch right into her beautiful sleeping face because she just scares the shit out of him with her very inoffensive presence.

He sees her. She’s lying on her back with her arms pulled up and cradling her head. She’s sleeping through his freakout.

He presses his hand over his pounding heart.

 

 

  
When her eyes finally pop open and she sees him, this radiant and dreamy smile gradually spreads across her face, from her eyes down to her lips. He thinks that he’s never seen anyone else look at him this way. He remembers seeing this expression on her after they had sex for the very first time together. She woke up alone in bed after he ended his call with Sansa. He was sitting in a chair, about to tell her that he royally fucked up because he let his hormones get the best of him — and she momentarily looked so happy that they were together. This was right before she realized he was about to crush her.

Right now, she reaches her hand out to brush it over his bare chest. She hums out a contented sigh, and she sexily says, “Morning, baby,” as she smears her face into his pillow and rubs down his nipple with extra gusto. She’s naked from last night, and his comforter and sheet are still covering most of her body — until she stretches. After that, more of her smooth skin and her soft, pert breasts are just exposed to his eyes.

Out loud, he is like, “You have _got_ to be fucking _kidding me.”_ He generally means that he doesn’t understand how he is looking at this wonderfully beautiful, intimate shit right now. Her body is perfect. Her face is perfect. Her brain is brilliant. He is fat. His personality is crap. His brain is damaged. And it is crazy that his life has arrived at this moment.

She doesn’t understand why he’s already so cranky. She freezes, and she says, “What? What? _What?_ Kidding you about what? What? Is everything okay?”

“Everything is _fine,”_ he says — and he really _means it._ Everything is kind of great. But his voice is — as always — unconvincing.

 

 

  
She has to go meet Dany for a workout, but she’s infatuated and also really in love with him — so she is flagrant and bold and is not even giving many self-conscious fucks as she tries to get the easiest kind of affection she can elicit from him. She backs her ass right into his crotch.

He hisses out — surprised. And also in pain. His penis is actually really sore and raw because they have been having an obscene amount of sex over the last day.

She doesn’t realizes it’s a gasp of pain. She thinks it’s a sex sound, so she grabs his hand, puts it on her boob, and then she starts slowly grinding against him.

He is like, “Oh my _God,”_ which is another one of those really ambiguous statements.

Her voice is low and sultry and heavy as she says, _“Yeah,_ baby. You like that? Yeah, I bet you _like that,_ baby. You like my ass so much, don’t you? You dirty thing.”

And then his hand leaves her breast and bites into her hip as he clenches his teeth, holds her still, and tries not to scream because that would probably hurt her feelings. He groans, and he slowly scoots away from her butt — this is when she realizes that something is amiss.

Her voice is her normal speaking voice again. She is like, “Baby?”

He says, “Hey, man. Sorry. It just feels like my dick is bleeding from a million sandpaper cuts right now.”

 

 

  
She ends up sitting up, concentrating as she stares his soft dick down and asks him a bunch of clinical questions. She asks him if it’s ever hurt like this before, if it’s a deep hurt or really just an epidermis hurt, if it feels sharp in a certain place or just raw all over. She asks him if it’s possible there was like, actually grits of sand or glass shards in the condom from last night — if that’s a possibility. Like, where did he even buy that condom?

He tells her that it’s never hurt like this before. This is a fucking new occurrence. It is just epidermis pain, like a papercut, except for _on his dick._ He tells her that _she_ actually bought the fucking condom — like, it’s from the box she brought over — so if there were glass shards in there, it’s her fault. Also, she really does not want for there to be glass shards in there because that would mean that they fucked with a condom that contained a _million bajillion tiny holes in it._

“Oh, shit,” she says, blinking in understanding. “For real, though, that would not be cool.” She seems to move past the idea of a failed condom quickly. She ends up pushing his shoulder a little bit. She says, “Lie down. You’re blocking the light.”

 

 

  
At this point, it’s old hat to him — his shitty fucking body — so he’s like, what the fuck ever. He’s done being self-conscious about it. He rolls his eyes at the ceiling because he is just so classic and is just fucking cursed. And he just lies back and sinks deeper into his mattress and pillow as her face looms over his penis, studying it.

“I don’t see any cuts,” she says after a long pause, after she delicate picks him up and twirls him around in the course of the impromptu exam. She has her phone in her other hand, because she’s been Googling stuff about penis pain so that she can diagnose him. “So that’s good. It does look a little . . . darker and a little swollen at the tip.”

“Awesome,” he says. “Can’t wait to shower and soap up my dick.”

“Yeah,” she says soothingly — absently. She’s not listening to his snide commentary at all. He can feel her lift his foreskin. That causes him to raise his head to watch her. And then she says, “Oh shoot. I see a cut. Crap. Babe, this looks painful.”

He drops his head back down on his pillow. He says, “Fuck my _life.”_

“Look on the bright side. At least it’s not an STD.”

 

 

  
She has twenty minutes before she has to get up and get ready to meet Dany. She begs him to stay in bed for those twenty minutes so she can have a Sunday morning cuddle with him.

And she’s lying, because it actually ends being Sunday morning taunting, with some light cuddling. She keeps ripping her hand up and down his inner thigh really fast and really randomly — just scaring the shit out of him because he’s afraid she’s going to accidentally rip the skin _off of his dick_ in the course of her teasing. She keeps laughing every time he panics, freaks out, and covers his penis with both of his hands with each zip.

She starts gloating.

She keeps reminding him that he’s in this predicament because she fucked him so good, _so thoroughly, so hard_ that it just tore the skin right off him. She tells him she can’t wait for him to tell all of his friends about this — and about how her tight pussy just beat the shit out of his dick. She asks him if he’s ever been fucked so comprehensively before — and then she doesn’t even wait for him to sarcastically answer her. She just giggles and claps her hands together and tells him that this must be how men feel when they give their women urinary tract infections from hard, sexy fucking. She tells him that she had no idea she had so much fucking _power_ in her genitals.

All he can say to this is, “Oh my God,” with a slow head shake.

She asks him, “Grey, what if I told you that I have a very sexy, once-in-a-lifetime offer for you, right now? But the catch is that it expires in twenty minutes.”

“Missandei,” he says, sighing. “Shut up.”

She ignores him. She’s says, “What if I told you that in the next twenty minutes, you can _totally_ put your dick in my ass if you wanted to. Like, what if I told you that anal is on the table — but _only_ for the next twenty minutes.”

He’s covering his face with his hand, and he’s trying so hard not to laugh at this ridiculous woman and giving her the satisfaction of knowing that he thinks she is hilarious. He says, “Oh my God,” because that’s all he can let himself say.

 

 

  
The internet, according to her, tells him he has a few options. He can apply some over the counter creams, moisturize the area, keep it clean, and try healing up for a week or so without reaggravating it with sex, or maybe he can go to his doctor and ask about his brain, ask about his penis, ask about the weight gain on his body — just get everything out of the way in one fell swoop.

He’s a little dramatic. So he tells her that he just won’t have sex ever again. He’s just not meant to have sex. He went years without having sex, and he was fine and great and perfectly healthy. He starts having sex again and now his body is _breaking._ This is all her fault.

“Um, I know you’re joking — but you take that back,” she says. “It’s not my fault.”

“I know, Missandei,” he mutters. “Sorry. It’s not your fault. You’re great.”

“Also, I don’t think it’s accurate to say you were perfectly healthy those years you weren’t having sex. Like, you had a brain tumor.”

“No, I didn’t mean the first time. I didn’t mean my teenage and college years,” he corrects. “I meant the five years you were gone.”

“Oh,” she says, thinking it over. And then she says, “Wait. Are you telling me you didn’t have _any sex_ while we were broken up?”

“Oh shit,” he says softly, kind of embarrassed now. He really likes how he accidentally just confessed to her that his sexual experience in the last decade is so fucking limited and just made up of her. “Did I not tell you that?”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “This is the first time I’m hearing this. You didn’t like — date anyone?”

“I went on dates,” he mumbles, cutting eye contact. “Sometimes.”

“Okay, and they didn’t progress?”

“Uh, no.” Obviously because he fucking _sucks_ and is _obnoxious as fuck._ He adds, “The closest I actually got to having sex with someone else was actually with Dany.”

“Oh my God, I don’t want to know,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t want to know about how you almost slept with my best friend.”

He’s silent after that. He’s just on his back and propped up on his elbows so that he can look at her. She’s sitting up, at his hip because she’s been examining his broken dick. They are both having this conversation while stark naked.

“Why didn’t you sleep with each other?” she suddenly blurts — just flying in the face of her expressed emotional pragmatism. “I mean, she’s beautiful, she’s awesome, and you guys have a lot of affection for each other. Why didn’t you make a go of it? Was it because of Drogo?”

“She and Drogo weren’t a thing at that point,” he says — reluctantly. He’s not sure this is a smart conversation to have. “I think we didn’t sleep together because it didn’t feel right for us — for our friendship.”

“But you slept with me — when I came back and started working for you,” she says. “You didn’t worry as much about _our_ friendship or our working relationship.”

“Um, I actually was against becoming involved with you — for a very long time,” he says softly. “Because of those considerations.”

“Oh, _right._ I forgot that I pushed you into sex,” she says, mostly to herself. “And then I also pushed you into a relationship. I guess Dany was cool and generally respected your wishes and didn't desperately force herself on you,” she says flatly, unimpressed with the turn this conversation has taken. Then with fake pep, she says, “Wow, I am _so sensitive_ about this! Wow. I’m such a girl about this! I can’t _wait_ to tell our kids the story of how we got together. Mommy just wore Daddy the fuck down until he lost the will to fight her off — oh my God, I am talking about our hypothetical kids like a fucking lunatic — I am so sorry. We’ve never even talked about whether or not — oh my God! We’ve been together for two weeks! I’m _crazy!”_

After a protracted and strained bit of silence — with her and her flushed face staring him down and him still just awkwardly reclined and physically exposed — he says, “I’m not sure what to say right now.”

 

 

  
Missy really loves how the beginning of her second relationship with the love of her life is really full of terrible fucking heavy conversations and of her constantly shoving her foot into her mouth and saying the most embarrassing stuff all the time. She can only keep it fun and sexy for all of two seconds before it takes a nose-dive back down into labor-intensive stress and doom again. At this rate, he will never fucking love her again. He will just eventually get tired of her and realize that he is better off not having to constantly _work his ass off_ to compromise and meet her in the middle on _everything._ She is not a cool chick at all. She is not a fun chick _at all._ She is the harbinger of gloom. She is intense and overly invested. She is a fucking nightmare. And she is also the breaker of dicks.

When she meets up with Dany and Zane, Zane is forcefully cheerful and enthusiastic, and Dany looks like she wants to rip his head clean off with each punctuated, “Awesome!” that he exclaims. Missy just knows that Zane is about to have a bad afternoon because Missy cannot be overly nice to compensate for Dany’s pissy anger today.

Like, when Zane has her do burpees and randomly says, “Baby got back!” Missandei stops the burpees and whips her face around to look at him.

She stares him down and says, _“Don’t_ say _that_ to me,” with a fair bit of heat and a fair bit of aggression.

And Zane is like, whoa. He immediately starts scaling back and saying, “I mean good job, Missandei! You’re doing very good!”

 

 

  
Drogo considers canceling lunch with the Dothrakis — Drogo texts Grey to see where Grey is at because Drogo knows that Missandei is hanging out with Dany, thus Grey is probably free. Via text, Grey tells Drogo that while he appreciates the check in, he’s just going to do errands during the day.

Drogo asks if Grey wants company, which is a bit of a strange offer. And Grey quicky says no. He says that he’s all good and would like to have some alone time.

Usually when he gets rebuffed at the altar of Grey’s introversion, Drogo just goes, naaah, cancel your plans. We’re hanging out.

But he doesn’t feel like it’s right to do that right now. Instead, he just accepts it — he accepts the distance between the two of them. He trusts that Missandei has this shit covered — and he forces himself to not think about it too much. He ends up going to the store to buy a 24-pack of a domestic light lager — just the kind of shit that Grey hates but the kind of stuff that Dothrakis like — and he brings it on through to Jommo’s place.

All of his Dothraki friends ask him where his boy is — because they are used to seeing Grey hovering around Drogo at these things. Drogo tells them all that Grey is just tied up. Just has other plans. Is busy with other stuff. It sounds super prim, super white, he feels at a loss, and no one really comments on it.

 

 

  
Their conversation is stilted and kind of awkward because there’s an elephant in the room — one that they have individually made vows not to discuss. Missy eats her chicken wrap, drinks her water, and she tells Dany that she got kicked off a project because a man didn’t like how she talked back to him. She also tells Dany it’s actually a lot more nuanced than that, but she’s kind of ticked off, so that’s how the story currently goes in her head. She was dicked over by patriarchy.

This is one of Dany’s favorite topics — which Missy knows — so Dany predictably starts talking about being dicked over by men, and she also talks about how men are bitches in a fairly abstract way. She says that men are fragile and delicate. She says that men mismanage their emotions by blowing up and getting angry, and everyone is fooled into thinking that it’s powerful — but it’s actually not. It’s actually just some bitch throwing a temper tantrum.

Even Dany is not fully committed to her own rant. It fizzles out, and they lapse into silence again.

Missy says, “How’s work for you?”

Dany mutters, “Same shit as always. Stressful.” She shrugs and then does not elaborate.

Missy says, “I like your top.”

“Yeah?” Dany says, looking down at her breathable tank top.

“I like the bra, too.”

“The boobs make the bra,” Dany says, patting her own breasts.

“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting you got implants. They’re really subtle.”

“Yeah, that’s what I like about them, too.”

“Is Drogo a fan?”

“I don’t give a _fuck_ what Drogo likes,” Dany says pointedly. And then conceding, she says, “He’s ambivalent about them — the implants, I mean. He likes my boobs, of course. Because he is a guy.”

Missy really wants to be super petty and immature and scream out something like: _Did Grey also like your fake tits when you shoved them in his face while I wasn’t around!_

But she doesn’t lash out. Because Dany has nothing at all to do with Missy’s insecurities.

Instead, Missy rubs her bare face vigorously before muttering, “I got a new water bottle. It holds thirty-six ounces. I love it. It’s huge. And blue.”

 

 

  
Missandei texts him to let him know that she’s heading to her brother’s place for the rest of the day. She’s letting him know that he doesn’t have to come over for dinner if he’s not feeling up to it.

It sounds weirdly petulant and punishing and passive-aggressive? But it’s so hard to tell over text. He’s probably reading too much into it. He just doesn’t like how they left things in the morning. He doesn’t like that they just started talking about how he’s a fucking loser who is only good at tricking one woman — her — into having sex with him. He doesn’t love how much she just stresses him out by bringing up things he’d rather suppress to the forefront — constantly. He doesn’t love all of the fucking _talking._ He hopes that he is not fucking dying, so that they can take a break from cramming in _as many conversations as possible_ before he perishes. If he is dying, he doesn’t want to live out the rest of his short life having tense conversations with her. If he is dying, he probably will just go live out the rest of his life in the woods somewhere.

He ends up needing to wear briefs underneath basketball shorts because his dick is just a weak piece of shit right now. He doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to do for work. Just show up to work in lightweight pants that don’t have dangerous folds and zippers to fuck with — for the foreseeable future?

He also ends up showing up to Mars’ place. This is the exact shit he doesn’t like — reading in between the lines. He suspects that she actually wants for him to come to dinner. He suspects that she doesn’t really mean it when she says that it’s okay if he’s not feeling up to it.

She actually looks surprised to see him, when he shows up on the doorstep with like, sparkling water because he doesn’t think he should bring alcohol to a family dinner, and he doesn’t think the girls should drink high fructose corn syrup so he doesn’t bring soda. He doesn’t bring flowers because Mars is a man.

“We weren’t expecting you,” she says, giving him her cheek to kiss.

“Is there enough food?” And then he immediately _hates_ that he said that. Because he is such a fucking fatass.

“Always more than enough,” she says, stepping to the side so he can enter the house.

Mars catches sight of him from inside the kitchen. Mars says, “Oh shit! Look who showed his face!”

Oh. Awesome. Just fantastic. He already loves that he’s here.

 

 

 


	11. Mars hates Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mars does not understand why his sister is so in love with some sports-hating guy devoid of personality.

 

 

 

Every shitty thing that Mars feels about Grey pretty much solidifies as dinner is prepared

It starts with Mars trying to hand Grey a beer and Grey rejecting said beer, citing that he doesn’t drink on Sundays. Grey doesn’t drink when he has to work the next day because he is severe and rigid, and he now needs his shitty brain to be as sharp as it can currently be. Mars knows nothing about Grey’s inner turmoil, so he makes a tepid joke about church and how God isn’t always watching. Grey doesn’t get the joke and responds with bland seriousness — he tells Mars that he is not religious and does not believe in any god. Mars feels all like: What the fuck, why is this conversation so fucking terrible?

And while Mars is not particularly religious himself, he is alarmed by the idea that his baby sister is with some godless guy with no morals. He’s irrationally afraid this guy will ditch his sister on the side of the road in times of peril or something shitty like that — because this guy has a history of just shafting his sister and dropping her like a dead weight whenever.

Mars tries to forget all that shit. He tries to push it down really hard and not think about it. He tries to tease Grey a little bit — he tries to be nice and tries to convince Grey that one beer won’t hurt him. Grey — again — responds with seriousness and says some variation of, “I know one beer won’t kill me,” steadfastly refusing the beer and Mars’ hospitality again.

Mars stares at the guy. He just doesn’t fucking get the fucking appeal whatsoever. Missandei is fucking _crazy._ And he slowly says, “Okaaay.”

 

 

  
On his part, Grey doesn’t feel comfortable parking his ass on a chair and watching Missandei and her nieces cook dinner — even though that’s completely their ritual and has been for years. He doesn’t get the point in sitting at the kitchen table with a beer doing jackshit when like, carrots need to be peeled. So he tries to insert himself into the food prep — all the while kind of irritated that dinner isn’t ready yet because dinner was supposed to be ready at six, but it’s six thirty and carrots aren’t even peeled yet. The lackadaisical manner of the girls is something he understands intellectually, but he still does not actually understand it. He doesn’t understand the unpredictability of youth. And here, he cannot yell at anyone or threatened their livelihood. He cannot tell them to move the fuck faster or else they are fired. He just has to watch helplessly as Sarah does a shit-poor job at dicing onions, and the carrots sit there just unpeeled. It’s like they don’t know that it’ll take the carrots way longer to cook than the onions.

When he makes a move for the carrots, the girls kind of freak out. They laugh and they squeal because they’ve probably never seen a man cook before — and he gets pushed back to the kitchen table with Mars and Darin, Camille’s boyfriend who is drinking a beer and full of yessirs — full of deference to Mars.

 

 

  
Being an extreme extrovert with a lot of social skills, Mars cannot even understand why this motherfucker is so fucking weird and awkward. Mars thinks that Grey is doing this shit on purpose because there’s no way this motherfucker is doing this on accident. Mars reads Grey’s stingy responses and lengthy pauses as snobbery.

Mars is a very proud man. He’s proud that he survived the early loss of his parents in his adolescence. He’s proud that he managed to keep his sister close to him. He’s proud that he raised her and helped her become the amazing woman that she currently is. He’s proud that his daughters are on that same path. He’s proud that he turned his life around and none of the shit he does is illegal anymore — he’s proud that he’s gone straight, and he’s legit now.

And he’s also insecure. When he looks at Grey — it’s not logical, but Mars sees a guy who is blessed and who got lucky and got a bunch of breaks. He sees a guy that made it by denying his race and his culture — he sees a guy that is whitewashed. Mars’ context makes him feel like the only way for people like them to win is to excise their cultural identity from who they are. He refused — he couldn’t do that. But this motherfucker in front of his face has no issues doing it.

And Mars can see Grey’s influence on his sister. He constantly observes that she is bougie now. He constantly forgets that she’s actually always been a bit bougie. Mars generally has a hard time understanding that certain things are intrinsic to her and actually have nothing to do with Grey. Mars is also prone to seeing his sister as a little girl — as his baby sis — not as a full-grown adult woman. He assumes that she is way more malleable than she actually is. He thinks she’s easily influenced. He also thinks that whoever his baby sister is with should protect her and take care of her and treat her like she’s a fucking queen — because he’s a little traditional and old-fashioned in this respect. He continues to really hate the way his baby sis looks at this motherfucker.

But he’s trying to be cool. He’s trying to be inclusive. For Missy’s sake. He says, “Yo, man, you mind if I turn on the TV to catch the tail-end of the game?”

Grey looks at Mars all strangely — because he doesn’t get why Mars is asking him permission to turn on the TV in his own home. Grey doesn’t get that Mars is trying to talk to him in the way that alpha men sometimes talk to other men. Grey is also _so_ _fucking_ burnt out. He’s so tired of constantly talking. He’s tired of constantly fielding the millions of questions from Missandei’s nieces. He’s tired of feeling all of this _pressure_ to fucking _marry her_ and _have children_ with her — on top of _all of the shit_ he has to deal with, in regard to his health.

So Grey says, “Yeah, whatever, man. I’m not really super into football.”

That statement like, creates _so much tension_ inside of Mars. Because of course. Of course. Of course. _Of course_ this motherfucker isn’t super into football.

 

 

  
Grey actually likes Jessica, Mars’ girlfriend. She’s a social worker. He’s hung around her a few times — at Missandei’s nameday and at other dinners. He knows that she probably already knows his entire deal because this family gossips a lot, but nonetheless, he still casually mentions to her that after his parents died, he was put into foster care and was bumped around a few times. He tells her that his social worker back in the day was pretty rad — he’s kind of trying to pay Jessica’s line of work a compliment, trying to find some common ground.

She has a certain sensitivity and alertness that comes with her job and is also innate to who she is — so she generally gets what he’s trying to communicate.

They’re like, two seconds into their conversation before Mars interrupts because he is bored or because he doesn’t like that everything’s not about him. It drives Grey absolutely _nuts,_ but he does not comment on it.

 

 

  
Missandei is stressed out and frazzled. In front of her face are multiple steaming pots and pans of food. In one corner is her big brother and his tense masculine energy — he is constantly testing Grey left and right. In the other corner is her guy, who completely resents being here and has perma-bitch face. Everyone else is vying for her attention. The girls are constantly asking her stuff, from what to do next with the food to what her thoughts are on reality show contestants, to whether or not she’s going to join them for family vacation — say yes say yes say yes it’s tradition now! Camille is also obsessed with adulting, so there are also a lot of questions about when her auntie bought her first home, how much it cost, how she was able to afford it, how she figured out the financing bits, and also how they miss Auntie’s old house.

Missandei keeps saying, “What?” and “Huh?” because she’s having a hard time paying attention to everything.

 

 

  
Grey is just drowning. It’s very clear that he can’t say or do shit right, and he’s almost to the point where he has stopped caring about it.

Like, Missandei models Jess and starts fixing him a plate of dinner, and he was like, nah, man. He rejects her plate of food because it’s fucking weird to be fed like this. He’s not a fucking child. He’s a grownass man. She’s not his servant. He can get his own fucking plate of food. Besides, there’s way too much meat on the plate, and he is trying not to eat so much like a fucking fatass.

Missandei is over it — she’s over him. She gives him a glare, and she drops the plate down in front of him anyway without much comment. Then she turns her back and goes back to the stove to dish up a plate for herself.

Even though he starts eating the food, the fact that he originally rejected the plate that Missandei held out to him ends up making her brother completely incensed. Grey already knows he’s about to get yelled at — before it actually happens. He momentarily shuts his eyes to get a moment of peace before he gets chewed out.

“That’s kind of rude, don’t you think?” Mars asks him, glaring at Grey’s head from across the table. Camille and Sarah immediately start avoiding eye contact because they both know their dad pretty well. They are generally familiar with his temper.

“I think it’s rude that she didn’t ask me what I wanted before loading up a plate for me,” Grey says. And he is completely joking.

But as usual — _no one ever fucking gets_ that he is _hilarious._ Mars’ jaw clenches. And then he drops his fork down on his plate. “Unbelievable. You’re gonna talk like that to _my —”_

“I am _joking!”_

“In my _house —”_

“I can get my own food! Why are all the women cooking —”

“They like it!” Mars exclaims. “That’s what they do! They cook, they talk, they fucking _bond!_ I’m not forcing —”

“I like to cook, too!”

“Well then! When the _fuck_ is dinner at your place, then?”

“Oh you wanna come over?” Grey asks challenging — like he’s somehow making a threat here. “Fine! Come over!”

“We don’t know where you _live,_ man! You ain’t never invited _none of us_ over before —”

“I _just_ started dating your sister again —”

“Now, you know that’s a _lie._ You’ve been screwing with my sister for a _long time_ now.”

 

 

  
She actually burns her arm in the course of turning off the rest of burners. She burns her forearm on a cast iron skillet that’s still scorching hot because she’s so wrapped up and distracted by all of the yelling. She hisses in pain — they don’t notice — and she flicks off the last burner in anger.

Jess sees, though. Jess watches as Missy heads to the sink to turn on cold water to submerge her arm under, and Jess says, “Miss, babe, are you okay?”

That has Mars on alert. He also says, “Missy — what happened? Are you okay?”

And then just when he’s about to say something else, Missandei interjects and is all like, “Can you like, just be nicer to him?” She is referring to Grey, of course. “He’s trying — he’s clearly trying. And you are not giving him a chance at all.”

And then before Grey can low-key gloat by relaxing his bitch-face just a little bit, she points to him with her good arm. She says, “You are cranky, and you clearly do not want to be here right now. Why did you even come? I told you that you didn’t have to.”

“Uhhh,” he says, looking around the room now. “I thought you weren’t serious about that. I thought I was gonna get in trouble if I didn’t come.”

She scoffs. She is so unimpressed with him right now. She says, “I’m not like that. When I say things to you — _I mean them._ And you should know this about me. It’s insulting that you think I’m like that.”

He feels kinda dumb. He also sounds kinda dumb as he says, “Oh.”

“Do you want to go home right now?” she says plainly. “Just go home if you want to.”

“Well, no,” he says weakly. “I’m like, already here. It would be a real dick move to just get up and go home.”

“Then _fix_ your attitude!” she suddenly snaps.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He sighs. “You’re right. Sorry.”

“No,” she says. _“I’m_ sorry.” She means she’s sorry for snapping. And then she exhales. She leaves her plate of food on the kitchen counter — and then she exits the kitchen. Presumably to tend to the burn.

Jess and the girls quickly get up to follow Missandei into the small bathroom.

 

 

Mars and Grey both feel like real dipshits after half of the table leaves. Darin just feels monumentally awkward and wishes he was anywhere but here. However, he has to sit around like a hostage and listen as Mars’ fork scrapes against his plate, as he stirs his food around.

 

 

  
Camille is wiping burn cream into her aunt’s arm as Sarah reads out loud from her phone — directions on how to treat a superficial burn. Jess is cramming all of the bandages and gauze back into the first aid kit.

Sarah giggles spontaneously.

Camille says, “What?”

“I liked it when Auntie yelled at Grey to fix his attitude. That was great.”

“Oh my God, yeah,” Jess says. “I’m going to start trying that with your dad. Seems really effective.”

 

 

  
The rest of dinner is fairly calm and uneventful. Mars and Grey seem like they’d just rather avoid the shit out of what went down — which seems childish, but that’s their problem and their thing. She doesn’t care right now. She just sits down in the empty seat next to Grey and starts eating from her cold plate — which is actually not cold at all. It is hot.

She spits out some carrot back onto her plate because it’s too hot. She says, “Whoa, why is that _so hot?”_

“I heated the food back up for you guys,” Grey says gently. “It made the biscuit kind of soggy and tough because I forgot to take it off the plate before nuking it. Sorry. Is your arm okay?”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah. My arm is fine.”

 

 

  
They all clean up together after dinner, including Mars, who starts pulling out plastic containers to store leftovers. This family has their own ritual, with everyone loading up their own plasticware to take home. Grey’s actually not at all used to taking food like this — packing food like this — that when Jess offers him his very own container, his instinct is to automatically say no thanks.

But then he pauses. And then he decides that he will take a few half-ears of corn.

 

 

  
She seems fairly distant with him still — so this is why he lingers after dinner, why he stays even after the kids have gone home. She’s wiping down the kitchen counter with a damp rag, chatting with Jess, and he has nothing to do — nothing to make himself useful with.

So he ends up walking out into the living room, where Mars is chilling on the couch with another beer, watching the evening news. Mars picks up the remote and turns the volume down a little bit as Grey chooses the oversized armchair to sit in.

After a pregnant pause, with both of them staring at the TV screen and pretending to watch, Mars finally says to Grey, “Yeah, man. I guess I’m a little hard on you, sometimes.”

There’s a long and awkward pause on his end, too. Then Grey says, “I don’t really understand why. I thought we were cool. And then one day, we just weren’t cool anymore.”

Mars is frowning, because he also remembers that short window in which he and Grey were pretty alright. “Man, yeah. I have no excuses. It’s just ‘cause you were fucking with my sister — with her emotions and stuff. And that really made me pissed at you because she was just so sad, and she was crying all the time.”

“Oh,” Grey says. He’s frowning, too. “Okay, that’s a good reason to be mad at me. I’m sorry.”

“It happens,” Mars says, not really lifting his eyes from the TV screen, which is playing a commercial right now. “I know stuff gets complicated sometimes. I know you’re a good guy. And I know you look out for her, and I know you love her.” He shrugs. “I just, I worry about her. And maybe it’s not my job to worry about her anymore. Maybe I just . . . need to just let go and get more used to you being around, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Grey says — quietly. “Maybe.”

 

 

  
When he says goodbye to Jess and Mars, he tries something new. He instigates a hug with Jess and he also instigates a hug with Mars. Mars laughs loudly at the gesture and just says, “Oh, we doing this? Oh we doing this? Oh, we doing _this!”_ on repeat as he grabs Grey and envelopes him in a bear hug.

 

 

  
As she watches her brother and Grey hug, she thinks that men are so stupid and they are so frustratingly stunted sometimes. But she’s generally glad that they seemed to have worked out some of their issues.

After saying bye to Mars and Jess, she trots down the slope of their driveway in the dark, and she stops off at the driver’s side door of her car. He catches up to her and is standing right in front of her. She’s pretty sure they are spending the night apart. She’s pretty sure he’s completely overloaded on human interaction.

She lightly taps her fist against his stomach before raising her face to give him a kiss goodnight. She feels him brushing her hair off of her face. She smells his soap and also the garlicky scent of dinner. She lets him kiss her, slow and carefully.

“You’ll call the doctor tomorrow?” she murmurs with their faces still close together, as she wraps her arms around his back.

“Yeah,” he says softly, squeezing her back. “I will.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow at work?”

He hesitates. He hesitates because he could be dying and he may not have very much time with her — and he might just be a selfish person. He says, “Um, would you like to stay over again?”

She grabs his arms in her hands and leans back a little to assess him. She says, “Are you sure? We’ve been spending a lot of time together. I know you need your space.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure. But maybe we can give the talking a rest.”

“We can’t talk. We can’t have sex. What on earth are we actually going to do? Sit in silence together?”

“Oh my God,” he mutters. “That sounds amazing, actually. And we actually _can_ still have sex. Like, _you_ can have sex.”

"True. Are you offering?"

"I was just trying to be accurate. But yeah, if you want to, sure."

"Ah, the begrudging, 'Sure, I guess I'll have sex with you if you really want me to.'" She presses a smile into his cheek. "More of that, please." 

"With my luck lately, I'm probably going to get lockjaw. And carpal tunnel."

 

 

 

 


	12. Deja vu for Jaime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime gets told that his buddy may be dying. Grey procrastinates on making a doctor's appointment. Missy tries to not make the same relationship mistakes over and over.

 

 

 

He still needs to learn to get used to waking up in bed with a beautiful woman who keeps saying she loves him and who keeps wanting to have sex with him and his soft, flabby body all the time. His life is kind of hard.

He’s the kind of person that generally sleeps stock-still, and she’s the kind of person that rolls around and constantly shifts positions over the course of the night. Part of his Pavlovian response to being touched as he’s sleeping actually is partly Drogo's fault. Before Drogo, Grey already had a few minor co-sleeping issues stemming from his childhood. But after Drogo — after being constantly confronted with Drogo’s tendency for spontaneous tickling and butt patting — Grey kind of sleeps defensively now. When he gets touched, his body assumes it’s about to get messed with, and he goes into flight-and-fight mode automatically.

It’s taking his body a bit to relax around her — to remember that she is not trying to tickle his stomach or touch his butt or slap his balls around — at least, not in the way that Drogo does it. Drogo and Missandei generally touch his body parts in really, really different kinds of way.

He’s awake before his alarm alerts them that it’s five in the morning. He is resolved to carry on with this day like nothing is that different. However, he does shut off the alarm, and he does put his warm hand on her shoulder to gently shake her awake. He thinks this is a kinder way to wake up than to obnoxious electronic beeping. He says, “Hey, it’s almost time to get up.”

The first thing she mutters to him is, “Why do we have to get to the office _so early_ all the time?”

 

 

  
She stopped at her apartment to grab some work clothes before she went further north to his place to sleep. They haven’t yet settled into a domestic groove, so some things are still uncertain and awkward because she doesn’t want to make a wrong move and set them back. She has been accidentally doing and saying crazy shit, like asking him if he wants to marry her and telling him what their pretend kids are gonna be like. She has been a psycho, so she needs to scale back on the psychopathy and she needs to like — honestly — chill the fuck out. He will fall back in love with her when he’s good and ready to. She cannot move it along by scaring the shit out of him with _tons_ of commitment.

Like, she starts changing her clothes while he’s in the shower, and she’s not sure where she should put her dirty clothes — in his laundry basket or back into her bag so she can take them home and wash them in her machine herself. She thinks that it’s psycho to be overthinking this the way that she is, but she doesn’t want to send him the message that she thinks he’s her maid — but she also doesn’t want to send him the message that she thinks him washing her clothes is a big deal because it’s not.

She ends up silently walking into his bathroom to deposit the clothes into the laundry basket. She walks by the shower stall. She can make out the general outline of his naked body through frosted glass. It’s kind of ridiculous because she’s probably seen him naked hundreds of times in the course of knowing him, but she averts her eyes. She feels kind of embarrassed because she still feels like an interloper in his home.

 

 

  
He’s back to being brusque and businesslike because it’s Monday, and Mondays are all about work to him. Mondays set the tone for the rest of the week. He leans hard on his tendency to apply hyperfocus on one thing and one thing only. He sends this intention out, loud and clear. For this reason, she doesn’t even try to sexy-talk him and smother kisses all over his face. She’s pretty sure that there’s a strong possibility he might actually punch her if she smothered him with smooches while he’s thinking really hard about whatever it is that he likes to think real hard about.

He breaks off one banana from the bunch sitting on his counter, because this is typically his breakfast — and he pauses before he recovers and picks up another banana, which he hands to her.

She says, “Thanks,” kind of going with his lead on the energy this morning. It kind of helps that she’s uniformed up in her heels, dress shirt, and slacks. She is a serious-ass professional. She is not a lovesick teenage girl.

 

 

  
They drive to the office in relative silence — because he typically makes this drive alone, and he typically spends the time thinking about projects, deadlines, and schedules over the next week or two. He thinks about how they are due to test out the rigs for the phone cameras pretty soon, how he needs to check in with the devs on the specialized software, how he needs to have a check-in with Pyp to see where everything is at.

She actually doesn’t think about work as obsessively as he does — not a surprise. She’s actually thinking about his doctor’s appointment and what the timeline is going to be — how fast test results come back, when they are actually going to know, what they are actually going to find out, whether or not her life is going to change drastically in a moment, how much time she actually has with him — and whether that time will be determined by his health or by something else. Maybe their relationship will end after a certain point because he decides that he hasn’t been with enough women — he’s basically only known one in his adulthood, and she is difficult and demanding of his time and attention, and perhaps he will start to think that relationships ought to be easier than this — because maybe they are?

She wonders if he even notices how much effort she’s applying toward shutting the fuck up so he can have his quiet internal time. She wonders if her own self-congratulation on this actually negates the accomplishment a little bit.

They seperate when they get to the office. He goes into his space and swings the door partly shut, but he doesn’t latch it. And she heads to the break room to make coffee.

 

 

  
Things actually start to ease up a lot for her once the staff arrives to work, and they actually start working. The staff meeting, which Jaime sits in on, goes smoothly and predictably. After going over business, there are ten minutes left in their scheduled time together.

She slouches a little in her seat and swings her body side to side in the office chair. She smiles at the staff, and she says, “What did y’all get up to this weekend? Anything fun?” 

“Oh my God, my parents’ dog Sheila had puppies,” Lommy says. “So I watched a dog birth and then I played with puppies all weekend.”

“Ooh!” Meera squeals, like a total girl. “Oh my God, do you have pictures? I love puppies!”

“What breed are the dogs?” Jojen asks. “Are they for sale?”

“Why? You wanna dog?” Lommy asks.

“Ah, no. I can’t in my apartment building! But one of my friends and his girlfriend have been talking about getting a dog.”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Jaime cuts in. “Are we just going to overlook the part when Lommy said he watched a dog give birth?”

 

 

  
Drogo gets to the office at nine — which shocks Missandei so much that she actually drops her jaw and then blatantly stares at him. He laughs a little bit at her face then reaches into his plastic bag, pulls out a bagel, and tries to shove it into her mouth. That makes her sputter and swat at his hand — but when she realizes that it’s an onion bagel — her favorite — and she reaches out and swipes it from him. She sing-songs out a, “Thank youuu!” before she goes into the break room to hunt down some cream cheese. He hears her call out, “Goddammit, carbs and fat,” before her back goes around the corner.

 

 

Much like the first time, Jaime learns about Grey’s health issues second-hand. He learns about it because Drogo straight-up tells him during their one-on-one in the late morning.

Drogo tells Jaime that Grey is worried that something is up with his brain and his body again — because he’s been gaining weight so easily and things have been feeling off in his head.

Drogo says, “Yeah, he’s probably just getting fat because he’s getting old. At least, that is what we are all hoping for.”

“Yeah,” Jaime says, still absorbing the news. Jaime is not even offended that he is not getting this news personally delivered from the man himself — because the man in question is Grey. Grey is fucking awful about this shit. “Has he made an appointment with his doctor yet?”

“Fuck if I know, man,” Drogo mutters. “Grey-related shit is kind of Missy’s domain now. I don’t know if she’s been on his ass enough about making an appointment, but I assume she is.”

“Nah, man,” Jaime says. “Don’t assume. You should tell her that she has to be harassing that asshole, twenty-four-seven, to ensure that he gets his head checked out by a doctor. She might not know.”

“How can she not know?”

“Dude, I’d just doublecheck with her.”

 

 

  
As Jaime and Drogo capably predict, three o’clock hits — the day has been going nonstop — and Grey still has not called his doctor’s office to make an appointment. He feels this general sense of dread over it, so he keeps putting it off.

At first, he told himself he has six hours to do it. And then after some time passes, he told himself he has four hours to do it in. And then he goes off to a meeting to look a the custom rigs for the camera phones. And after that meeting, he looks at the clock and he tells himself he still has two hours to make an appointment.

 

 

  
Jaime has these memories of awkwardly waiting around in the hospital, waiting around to hear about both his brother’s and his colleague’s surgeries. He remembers being bewildered at all of the new information and just the sudden shift in his plans — and he remembers being pretty pissed, actually — that his life was upended because of a car accident.

Jaime and Grey weren’t close at all back then, and he can remember sitting in the waiting area and already scripting out what he might say, on the off-chance that Grey dies on the table and Jaime had to be the one to deliver the news to Tyrion _and_ the crew.

Jaime didn’t know how stressed out he actually was about it all — his brother’s broken arm, being in a hospital again, waiting to learn whether or not Grey was still ticking — until the surgeon came out to first tell him that his brother’s open reduction went fine, and Jaime almost teared up in relief because he was kind of worrying that the worst will happen — Tyrion will get an infection and die, or Tyrion will get an infection and his arm will need to be cut off. Out loud though, he said something borderline inappropriate. He can’t quite remember what he said, probably some variation of, “Oh, shit. Of course that motherfucker is going to be fine.” He remembers the doctor laughing a little bit. He remembers being more invested in his brother than in Grey, naturally — that when Grey’s surgeon told Jaime that Grey was also fine, it didn’t hit him anywhere emotionally at all.

He actually did wig out a little bit — a fair bit — when a nurse went over home care for Grey with Jaime. Tyrion was still out of commission, so Jaime felt extra responsible and pressured to remember all of the shit. Call for an ambulance right away if Grey has trouble breathing, if he has a seizure. Call the doctor if Grey has trouble remembering things or is confused or has difficulty talking. Call the doctor if Grey is nauseous and vomits a lot. At the time, Jaime asked, “What is a lot?” And the nurse was frustratingly vague about it. She told him, “More than normal.”

She also told him to call the doctor if Grey has trouble peeing or if he cannot control when he pees or poops. Call the doctor if Grey has major changes in mood or behavior.

It seemed entirely asinine to tell the nurse that he actually barely fucking knows this person, so it’s unlikely he will be dealing with his coworker’s _pee_ and _poop_ — and he also does not even know this guy well enough to be able to detect changes in mood or behavior.

The nurse told him to pass along the message to whoever was going to be staying with and taking care of Grey then.

“Has he made an appointment with his doctor yet?” Drogo asks Missandei, as he sips from his glass of ice water. They all had an offsite meeting together — well, she and Drogo did. Jaime is still shadowing them so he can be informed enough to start to plotting out some things.

“I’m not sure,” she says, spearing her fork into her salad. “I assume so. He said he would call today.”

“Oh, you stupid, stupid woman,” Jaime says.

She pins him with a look. She says, “Excuse me?”

He smiles at her anyway, even though she does not look amused by him one bit. He says, “Sweetheart, he’s not going to make an appointment today. He’s probably not going to do it for another month — not unless you force him to.”

“Okay, so I’m not his mother, and he’s an adult,” Missy says, pretty much repeating Grey’s motto when it comes to their relationship. “If he says he will then I believe that he will.”

Jaime turns his attention. “Drogo, come on. Talk to your girl.”

“I’m not Drogo’s girl,” she says flatly, crossing her arms now.

“I meant his homie,” Jaime adds.

“Jaime,” she says. “Shut up. And you guys can seriously knock this shit off. I’m not into it. I’m not receptive to it. If this concerns you so much, I think you should just talk to him directly.”

“Missy, he’s going to get pissed if we push our way into his business,” Drogo says.

“But it’s okay for me to piss him off by nagging him?”

“You’re sleeping with him,” Drogo says — thinking that he sounds super reasonable. “I think that affords you some leeway.”

“Guess what?” she says. “It doesn’t.”

 

 

All those years ago, Jaime’s entire outlook on Grey’s surgery shifted when he actually went to the neuro critical care unit, all the fuck on a different floor and in a different wing of the hospital. He saw Grey all bandaged up and unconscious in a hospital bed — and Jaime got stuck remembering these terrible memories. When Jaime woke up from his own surgery, of course his dad wasn’t there. Neither was his sister. Only his brother was there — with this thin veneer of resentment hiding deep concern. That was terrible. It was just a fucking terrible time in life for him.

Jaime thought about how Grey might just die if Grey holed himself up in his apartment alone. What if he had a seizure while he’s by himself? What if he pissed and shitted himself and then had a seizure? What if the opposite happened? What if they were just out a really fucking awesome cameraman because there was no one to call an ambulance, and they wouldn’t find Grey’s body until a month had past and the neighbors started to complain about the smell of decay? What if Tyrion hadn’t also insisted that Jaime stay with him while Jaime was recovering from the loss of his hand?

Jaime also remembers the deep bitterness that was shot at him when Grey woke up. And that was something Jaime actually understood. He really didn’t expect for Grey to wake up and embrace Jaime with open arms and call him his savior. However, Jaime also didn’t expect for Grey to be as difficult as he ended up being. Like, that guy was a royal pain in the ass on some days. Like, Jaime wanted to fucking kill him on some days because he gave up his vacation to ensure that the fucker stayed alive, and all the fucker could do was be angry at Jaime over it.

 

 

  
He’s been through a variation of this a few times before — biding time in dread and anxiety. Back in the day, his logic was that — if he is already dying, then a day or two or three or ten don’t necessarily matter that much. Those are the days he can give to himself before an official diagnosis, before he is officially sick and before his life completely becomes about staving off death.

Back in the day, his logic was — the longer he delayed the inevitable, the longer he can lie to himself and tell himself that he is still normal and still just a camera guy who has a nice job and a bright future ahead of him. To get a diagnosis rips all of that away. So that was why he used to take a bit of a long time to see a doctor. He wanted to hold onto this idea that he had of himself a little bit longer.

At a quarter to five, he finally picks up his phone and he finally calls his doctor’s office. He does it even though he doesn’t want to because he thinks that he owes it to her. He owes it to her to take care of this in a timely manner so she’s not on the hook, so she’s not in limbo trying to plan for a future that may not exist for them.

The front desk person is pretty blase and she tells him that there is time on Wednesday morning, Thursday afternoon, or Friday afternoon.

On Wednesday, he’s got a shoot. On Thursday, he has back-to-back meetings. On Friday, he’s supervising setup with the team. He pauses on the phone and silently mutters out, _fuck!_

And then he thinks that he can probably get either Missandei or Drogo to cover some of the setup on Friday, depending on what their schedules look like. So he says, “I can do Friday at one.”

 

 

  
At the end of the work day, she’s pulling her laptop bag over her shoulder because she needs to do some work at home tonight — and Drogo and Jaime walk up to Grey to ask him if he has any dinner plans. It’s apparently a guy thing — she is not explicitly invited — and Grey remembers that they drove in to work together so he’s torn.

He says, “Um, Missandei, also? She, um — we, ah — we came in together today. So she has, um, no car.”

She still really likes how he’s so embarrassed to be seen with her in public.

“Like, there are bus routes,” Jaime says with a straight face.

“Like, she can Uber home,” Drogo adds, also with a straight face.

“Like, she has legs. She can walk.”

“It’s only like, seven miles.”

Grey looks uncomfortable because of how public this conversation is. She is pretending she is not hearing their stupid jokes because she is so, so fucking mentally tired. Pyp, Jojen, and Lommy _still_ cannot fucking _believe_ that someone with Grey’s personality is having sex with someone who looks like Missandei.

Yoren kind of smiles in glee and says, “I can drive Missy home, if she needs a ride.”

Grey does _not_ like the way that Yoren said _any of that shit_ at all — even though Yoren has a serious girlfriend and even though it’s pretty fucking obvious Yoren is just trying to mess with him for fun. Grey bites his tongue.

“I’d like to fit in a workout at the gym tonight actually,” Missy says to Grey. “So I can do my thing there for a couple hours and then meet up with you later? Does that work?”

“Yeah, that works,” he says.

Drogo loudly laughs. “Babe,” he says to her. “We’re fucking around. You don’t have to go to the gym. Totally come to dinner with us. Would love to have you.”

“Nah, man,” she says. “I actually really do want to go to the gym. I’ve had my fill of you guys for today.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	13. Grey's friends are mean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grey has dinner with his besties, and they take it upon themselves to tell him how he's doing life wrong. This is what he gets for being friends with opinionated people.

 

 

 

Jaime texts his brother and tells Tyrion to drop every-fucking-thing tonight because Grey might be dying — so they’re having an emergency dinner.

Tyrion texts back four really bitchy-looking question marks. And soon after that, Jaime’s phone starts buzzing and ringing.

Jaime is with Drogo when the call comes in. He holds up his right prosthetic hand in Drogo’s face, to get Drogo to stop talking as Jaime picks up his phone. Drogo doesn’t love that, so he’s about to bite Jaime’s head off — but Jaime nimbly avoids it all by walking off a few steps to give himself privacy. This is exactly the kind of shit Drogo doesn’t like about Jaime.

Into his phone, Jaime says, “You coming to dinner or not, dumbass?”

 

 

  
Jaime also texts Brienne to bluntly tell her that he has some major shit going on right now, so he’s gotta cancel on her, and she better not give him crap for it or else she’ll regret it real bad later.

Brienne simultaneously is used to yet resents Jaime’s overblown, pointless threats. Back when she used to work for him, she was stuck having to respond to his bullshit. These days, their relationship is different. She doesn’t really believe that some major shit is going down because he tends to exaggerate. So she rolls her eyes at her phone screen and doesn’t respond to him at all.

 

 

  
Yara meets them at the restaurant — and the rest of them are predictably a little bit late because they are always a little bit late. She refrains from making a huge deal about it — because Grey might be dying. Instead, she straightens up so she’s standing with her chest puffed out and her feet shoulder-width apart. She casually and smoothly says, “Hey,” as three men take their time walking up to her.

Jaime looks surprised to see her. He says, “Oh, what are you doing here?”

“Drogo invited me,” she explains. “He said he wanted to butch up the group a little.”

“I think that’s a burn on yourself?” Jaime says.

“No,” she corrects him grimly. Her face is very serious as she says, “That was actually a burn on all of womankind.”

 

 

  
When Tyrion arrives, he is deeply irritated because Grey looks completely normal and healthy to him. He says to Grey, “Is this some sort of fucking joke? Are you really fucking dying? Sansa is going to be pissed because she was supposed to go out with her friends, but instead of doing that, I asked her to cancel so she is stuck at home watching our kid while I am here — looking at you — and you look fucking _alive_ to me.”

 

 

  
Grey really loves how much of a deal this has turned into. He thought it was just a simple dinner because he probably owes it to Drogo because Drogo hasn’t gotten any time with him lately on account of Missandei — and it has turned into this fucking circus. It has turned into four pairs of eyes drilling into his face from around the table. He has already told them that he’s probably not fucking dying. It’s just that his brain is shit and his body is fucking shit.

“Have you made a doctor’s appointment yet?” Tyrion asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s not until Friday though.” Addressing Drogo, he says, “Speaking of, I need to work something out with you and Missandei. I need to miss a few hours of setup.”

 

 

  
Having gone through a version of this already in a previous life, and having been the point person for Jaime’s surgery and Jaime’s aftercare, having been thrust into the position of nursemaid time and time again — Tyrion is kind of fucking over it. He glowers at Grey, and while Tyrion knows it’s unfair, he says, “So I guess what you do is you fucking make people feel attached to you, and then you just freak the shit out of them with your medical shit.”

Yara kind of snorts out a laugh, the kind of laugh that comes out of a person really unexpectedly. It’s stifled and quiet and she looks surprised with herself.

 

 

 

Grey apologizes to Tyrion and tells Tyrion that he’s sorry that Tyrion’s entire night was upended for something stupid. He’s sorry that Sansa had to cancel on her friends for this stupid shit. He’s sorry that he’s pulled them all into this crap, before he even knows what the fuck is even going on — though he partly blames one-hundred percent of that on Missandei. She told him to express his concerns about himself to his friends. But he sees now that it’s fucking stupid to get people all worried and wrapped up in shit that might not even be real.

Drogo and Tyrion both start talking at the same time — and then they both stop talking at the same time. Drogo looks over at Tyrion, waves his hand, and says, “Go ahead, man.”

Tyrion nods at Drogo. And then to Grey, Tyrion angrily says, “You’re a fucking moron.”

 

 

  
Tyrion kind of uncaps the pipe, so to speak. He releases the valve and de-pressurizes the contents inside and just a whole bunch of shit starts gushing out. Tyrion starts yelling at Grey and telling him he is so fucking stupid. Tyrion starts to list out the reasons why Grey is fucking stupid.

Grey assumes he’s stupid for being a hysterical bitch, so he tells Tyrion that he already fucking knows why and how he is fucking stupid. Grey says it defensively and crankily, with his arms crossed over his chest.

Tyrion says that Grey really doesn’t know shit. He’s actually stupid because he doesn’t prioritize his health and his well-being — he doesn’t put himself first. Instead, he puts the job first or he puts even _convenience_ first. Tyrion tells Grey he has no fucking self-respect — and the last time they went through this shit, Grey also told Tyrion _way fucking late._ He told Tyrion that he could be dying _right before_ he had his surgery — and only because he needed a ride. That was really fucked up. It’s fucked up to be so repressed with this shit and to downplay it constantly and to act like it doesn’t matter and to act like this shit isn’t scary. It is actually infuriating.

Tyrion is saying all of this because of these hard lessons he’s recently learned in a hurry. He’s someone’s parent now. He barely drinks anymore. He works way less. He has started going to therapy after years of refusing to.

He has reprioritized many things in his life. Because he owes it to his daughter to stay healthy so that he can be around for her, for a very long time.

To Grey, Tyrion says, “It’s like — do you even want to live?”

“Of course I want to live,” Grey says testily.

“It doesn’t look like it sometimes — most of the time, actually. It doesn’t look like you give two shits about living, most of the time.”

 

 

  
After Tyrion’s outburst, the rest of them feel _really_ emboldened about telling Grey the honest, dirty truth without much adornment or cushioning.

Drogo accuses Grey of still working too goddamn much. Jaime parrots that back. He’s worked with them for just over a whopping week, but he can already tell that Grey fucking works too much and is stressed out to shit — in part because Grey is controlling and _cannot let go_ of much — and that is because Grey is shit at letting other people share in the burden.

“Like, why the fuck did he even hire me if you aren’t going to let me do my job?” Jaime says. “And what are you afraid of? That you’ll have more free time and more money to go do shit that you actually love doing?”

Yara tells Grey that he is always pushing people away and keeping them at a distance. He won’t easily accept hugs. He wary of making human connection. He gets fucking weird as shit when she says something nice to him, about him. He is always so fucking bitchy whenever she’s soft on him, as if he thinks that being honest and expressing love is like, this fucking weakass shit.

Drogo rambles as he tells Grey that Grey doesn’t consistent fight for himself. There have been these great moments in the past in which Grey went against the current and really fought for himself, but usually — he just chooses these fucking ridiculous minor battles to fight — like over fonts and over process and over shit that has no emotional pull. Drogo tells Grey that Grey didn’t fight for Dany — so Drogo took her. And while that worked out amazingly for everyone involved, it was still fucking dumb that Grey just let go of the one person — at the time — that could’ve made him happy. For no reason other than he was chickenshit.

“What is your end goal?” Drogo says. “What do you want at the end of this? To just die alone and quietly, bothering no one? Is that _really_ your fucking _goal?”_

 

 

  
Grey is incredibly pissed off. And he’s incredibly hurt. But he cannot identify that feeling in himself as hurt, so he just resorts to being fucking pissed. He’s so fucking angry at all of his friends that he cannot even talk. He just sits there in tense silence — as they get on him for _that._ They start telling him he’s shit at engaging, and he has an annoying habit of checking out of conversations when they become too much for him.

He doesn’t even have the capability to explain to them that he’s not even doing this shit on purpose. He actually _cannot_ speak right now. He actually _cannot physically_ speak. He thinks that it must be nice to be the kinds of people that can open their faces and have a bunch of shit about feelings and thoughts just flow out. But he doesn’t know how to do that at all. He doesn’t know how to feel fear of death. He apparently doesn’t know how to fucking _live_ — he just learned that tonight. And he doesn’t know how to talk to people. And he actually tries — he generally tries really fucking hard. But apparently, he really fucking sucks at it and everyone is just real sick and tired of him over shit that he is bad it.

He is really, really upset over this. He feels terrible about this. He feels like it’s all just pointless right now. And he feels like they are probably all right, and he’s just a fucking dumb idiot.

And he cannot even lash out or express any of this. He just sits there in silence. And the rest of them misread it and assume he’s just being himself — just being obstinate and defensive and resolute in his disengagement.

 

 

  
Drogo flips over his phone after it starts buzzing on the table. He looks at the glowing screen. It’s Missy. He mutters, “Oh shit,” because he just remembered her — that she exists and also that she is stranded without a car. He picks up the call and presses his phone to his ear. He says, “What’s up, babe? Where you at?”

She’s confused and speaking cautiously, as she tells him that Grey has not been answering her text messages, and Grey is not picking up her calls. She lightly suggests that maybe Grey’s phone is on silent or something — but anyway, this is why she’s calling Drogo. Are they still at dinner? Is he still with Grey?

He says, “Yeah, babe. We’re all together, and we’re still eating. Hang tight. I’ll come get you right now.”

 

 

  
She wants to walk to the restaurant because it’s only a mile away from the gym. She has a short squabble with Drogo about it over the phone because he wants to pick her up. But it’s a mile, so she tells him she can walk there easily. He is more worried that it’s getting dark, and she might get assaulted in the dark. He tells her it’s not safe for her to walk by herself.

She tells him she’s walking there. And then she tells him bye and hangs up on him.

She gets to the restaurant in fifteen minutes — still wearing her gym clothes and dragging a small drawstring bag that holds her work clothes and her purse. She waves at them. She’s already grinning, already telling Drogo, “See! I’m in one piece! It was totally fine!”

He smiles at her, but doesn’t say much.

“Hey, guys!”

And then she notices that the vibe at the table is like . . . really really weird and really really tense.

 

 

  
She pulls up a chair and wedges herself in between Grey and Jaime. For now, she’s going to pretend that everything is normal. She looks around the table at their half-eaten plates of food. She sees Grey’s cold plate, and she picks up his discarded fork and starts shoveling some rice and chicken into her mouth. She is kind of famished because she delayed her dinner so that he could have some alone time with his friends. Which — she can now see — went really, really well.

It’s like she’s sitting next to a ticking bomb. She doesn’t dare touch him because he’s in a mood — one that she can’t quite read. He might freak out and explode if she says the wrong thing to him.

Instead, to the rest of the table, through a mouthful of rice, she says, “So, why do we all look so unhappy? Beyond the obvious stuff about how he might be dying.”

 

 

  
No one really does an amazing job recapping what went down to her. They are all a little bit sheepish and perhaps kind of embarrassed now, so they just mumble stuff about how things got a little out of control, and they were just talking about stuff, like how Grey needs to be more careful with his health and stuff.

Grey is thinking that that is not at all what the fuck they were talking about — fuck them all — but he doesn’t express this. He is still pretty frozen.

“Did you make a doctor’s appointment?” she asks him, glancing at his face. And it’s the first moment she actually gets a good look at his face — and she stops herself from frowning. Because he looks really upset.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Friday.” And then haltingly, he adds, “I might need help with . . . scheduling . . . because of setup.”

“Okay,” she says. “No problem at all.”

 

 

  
The server comes around again and hands her a menu to look at and also to refill water glasses. Before she cracks open the menu, she looks around the table and asks, “Are you guys wanting to hang out for a bit longer? Can I order something now or should I get something to-go?”

“Oh, you should eat, Missy,” Jaime says.

 

 

  
When her food arrives, the table is still largely silent. She is surprised that no one is making a move to leave and go home. They all seem pretty insistent on staying and just . . . carrying on this awkwardness.

She got pork and rice with cabbage. It’s steaming hot, savory, and it hits her empty stomach just right. She actually groans loudly in pleasure as she shoves the second hot bite into her mouth. She laughs at herself, and to explain to the rest of them, she says, “This is so freaking good.”

“I got the same thing you did,” Drogo says. “It was aiight.”

“Man, this is awesome,” she corrects. “But you know, food always tastes more delicious when you’re famish. I am _starving._ This is so yummy. You guys wanna try a bite?”

No takers. They generally just blankly stare at her in silence. She thinks that this shit is really ridiculous. And she is not going to appease this. Her night is not going to become terrible and tense because of these people.

She goes back to her rice bowl. She reaches out to the middle of the table to yank up a bottle of hot sauce. She unscrews the tip of it before squirting some swirls of red into her bowl.

That’s when she feels his hand brush over her shoulder, before his thumb lightly presses into the base of her neck. She feels and sees him leaning forward a little bit. And then he quietly says, “Gimme a bite.”

This actually makes her like, _so happy_ and relieved. She starts beaming out this smile because she can’t help it. She gladly hands over her fork to him and watches him scoop up a modest bite before depositing it into his mouth. She waits in anticipation for the verdict.

He’s still quiet, but a little bit more relaxed as he says, “That’s pretty good.”

She grins directly at him. “I know, right!”

 

 

  
For a moment, his heart chokes up his throat and pushes emotion out of his eyes — he still feels overwhelmed and sensitive — but he also feels grateful. He can’t look at her for very long, but he sneaks this glances at her, and he just remembers how it feels to be so in love with her and to feel like he needs her so badly. He remembers what it feels like to hold onto her tightly and to want to be nowhere else but with her.

 

 

  
After she yawns through a mouthful of rice, they actually have this conversation in front of everyone else:

He asks, “Ready to go home soon?”

She says, “Sure.”

He says, “Wanna stay over again? Do you have clothes for tomorrow?”

She tries not to look shocked as hell — that he is letting her sleep over _again,_ and also telling the entire world this. She tries to look like this is totally normal and he is being totally normal, so that their friends think that she and Grey talk casually about her sleeping over like this _all the time_. She says, “Actually, I don’t.” She gestures down at herself, at her jacket and leggings. “This is the last of my clean clothes. And it’s not clean anymore.” She pauses. And then she adds, “Because I was drenched in sweat.”

He kind of smiles. He breaks eye contact to stare off into space as he says, “You wanna stop at your place, then? So you can grab some stuff?”

“My place is kind of out of the way. Do _you_ want to stay over with _me?_ That way, stopping over at your place for you to get your stuff is like, en route.”

“Sure,” he says.

 

 

  
Drogo is watching and listening to this, and he’s not exactly sure what point is being made here — but he realizes that there is a point. Maybe the point is that they are all actually wrong about Grey, and they should feel terrible for ganging up on him. Drogo actually _does_ feel terrible for _how_ he said what he said. He feels awkward over all of the stuff he blurted about Dany. He was speaking out some of these things he has never said to Grey but has secretly thought. It was definitely an inappropriate time and place for it though.

Drogo looks at Grey’s weary face, pointed only at Missandei as they quietly talk. Her expression is is gentle and careful — and Drogo thinks that maybe the point being made here is not that Grey was too chickenshit to be with Dany. Maybe the point is that deep, deep down, Grey was subconsciously making himself wait for _this_ — for something better. After all, Missy was pretty spot on when she said that it was wrong and stupid to nag Grey about making a doctor’s appointment. Maybe Drogo just doesn’t know Grey as well as he thinks he does.

Out loud, Drogo says, “So, I take it you guys are gonna be in pretty high spirits tomorrow, on account of getting laid tonight.”

It’s a peacemaking gesture. It’s totally weird and esoteric, but Grey picks up on it anyway. Grey kind of smiles at him — which makes Drogo feel relieved.

Missy actually says, “Oh! You didn’t tell him!”

Drogo is like, “Tell me what?”

To Missandei, Grey is rolling his eyes and like, _“Why_ would I tell him? _When_ in the course of my work day as a professional would I have the time or the inclination to tell him?”

“Oh my God,” Yara says, also fairly quietly and carefully inserting herself back into the conversation. “Now I have to know.”

“Oh my gosh,” Missandei says to Yara, her eyes kind of sparkling and mischievous. She sneaks a glance at Grey. Because she knows that he doesn’t like it when she talks about their sex life super flagrantly. “I’ll have to tell you later. You know, when he’s not around.”

“Yeah, okay,” Grey mutters. “Thanks for your paltry attempts at discretion.” He’s joking. He’s actually majorly relieved things are levelling out.

“Dude, Missandei,” Jaime says, also smiling. “You can’t just be dangling fucking carrots of information and then going, tee-hee nevermind!”

“It’s not that interesting,” Missy says casually. “It’s just sex stuff.”

Tyrion is laughing. He is laughing at Jaime’s awful impression of Missandei. He says, “Tee-hee?”

 

 

 


	14. Missy is perfect girlfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missy is supportive and romantic. Grey is susceptible. Unfortunately for him, his body is still falling apart.

 

 

  
Before they part ways for the night, all of his friends express to him that they want to spend more time with him — in general and also leading up to Friday. It’s been a while since they’ve all synced up their schedules to congregate together all in the same place at the same time. It’ll just be nice to have an excuse to spend quality time together — potential death, in this case, is the good excuse.

Tyrion suggests that they all come over for dinner in a couple days. It’s going to be great. He laughingly says he’s going to go home and tell Sansa to cancel her plans because she’s going to be cooking for a bunch of his friends. He is cracking his typical jokes about terrorizing his wife because he is trying to force normalcy into this entire situation.

Drogo mutters that he’s obviously down, but he has to check with Dany to see if she’s coming. Because he’s that type of motherfucker now. She just gets pissed when he assumes that she’s too busy to do cool stuff. She actually _is_ too busy to do cool stuff a lot of the time, but she has low-key FOMO about it. So she keeps harping on him to ask her. Drogo also feels shitty about dinner, so he is trying to wrestle things back to casual and light — with middling results. Jaime and Yara are quiet.

Hugs get exchanged before they part — no apologies are made though. Which is fine — because Grey isn’t sure that apologies will stop him from feeling the way that he currently does about his friends.

 

 

  
When they are alone in his car, after the overhead lights dim and it’s dark — he refrains from twisting the key in the ignition right away. Rather, he reaches out to grab the back of her neck with his hand. He slowly but firmly pulls her face to his. It sort of reminds him of youth — the idea of stealing kisses from a girl in a car before returning her to her home.

He skims his lips with hers — just enough for her to whimper because it’s not full-contact yet — and he whispers, “You are great. You are so great. I am —” He pauses. And then he mentally searches for the right words. And he says, “I care about you so much.”

“Well,” she says quietly, trying to keep it light — but then she sighs and just pushes out so much earnestness and so much conviction — kind of wearily, like the utterance is inevitable. She says, “You know I love you. You know I _just love you.”_ And then she touches his face with her finger tips. And then she closes the distance between their mouths. Her arms wind around his entire head inelegantly, and she pulls him to her and smears her chest to his chest. She jams her mouth against his and she immediately opens her mouth. The kiss is deep and wet and hot right away. It’s all frantic, full of spit and tongue — like she’s kissing him right before he has to go away, like she’s trying to hold onto these feelings that she has.

He kisses her back with the same enthusiasm she is giving him. It’s a mess, and it probably doesn’t look pretty — and this is nothing like the way he used to kiss girls as a teenager. Back then, he was really good at holding their hands, feeling warmth bloom from inward out, and being what he thought was really respectable and different from all of the other assholes that these girls knew.

Right now, he runs his hand from her spine to her front. This is a full-on make-out session in a car, and he absently observes they are probably too old for this. They also have apartments to do this shit in. He cups her breast, runs his thumb over her nipple, over her bra. He feels it tighten and pucker. She moans in his mouth, her tongue going a little slack.

And then she recovers. Her brain is a thick, slow mass of white noise and neediness as she rationalizes that he touched her sexually. So she is allowed to up the ante and touch him sexually, too. She sneaks a hand in between his legs to let him him know what she expects from him and what her intentions are with him.

He gasps in pain, breaking the kiss. Her wet lips smear against his cheek.

Her eyes open wide in horror. She says, “Oh my God, I’m sorry! I forgot! Are you okay?”

He nods tightly. He weakly says, “Uh huh,” through clenched teeth.

 

 

  
As planned, they stop off at his apartment so he can grab some of his stuff and leave his car, and then they head to her place in her car. The entire journey takes about half an hour, and he spends that time telling her about what exactly went down at dinner — in his point of view. It is embarrassing and shameful and depressing to repeat out loud, because he’s prone to editorializing. So he keeps telling her that his friends were just calling him a worthless idiot who wastes their time with his shit — because he is one. And they are all kind of fed up with his defensive, stubborn, self-sabotaging bullshit, which is probably the same kind of bullshit that she has to deal with from him on a daily basis. So he feels sorry for everyone. He feels sorry that they all have to put up with him even though it’s not worth the effort.

She tells him that she thinks he’s being too hard on himself. She tells him it doesn’t actually sound in character for any of their friends to say that they are fed up with him, because actually — they all have quite the tolerance for him.

“Well, maybe tolerance isn’t the right word. We’re not putting up with you. We love you. We actually want more of you. I bet that’s what they were trying to say to you. But they are . . . they are assholes. So I’m sure it came out mean-sounding. I’m sure they are all scared, and they are just responding in a way that feels safe to them. That’s probably why they were criticizing you a lot. They’re not touchy feely people. And that’s actually — the way they talked to you was you know, really hypocritical and cowardly. Did anyone even express that they were worried for you? I don’t think they did. It sounds like they just yelled at you and criticized you. And that’s actually really just — that was really unfair to you. I’m sorry they said stuff to you in a hurtful way.”

 

 

  
He’s currently really into her. He currently is really feeling her. He feels _such things_ for her. He thinks that she is fantastic and amazing and just perfect. It’s hard not to fall into the mental hole. It’s hard to be smart and be methodical and be careful. He just _wants her_ like he’s some kind of animal. He wants to smell every part of her body. He probably wants to pee on her to mark her. He wants to just . . . honestly, he just wants to fuck the shit out of her.

He’s going to. He’s got his tongue shoved down her throat so it’s impossible for either of them to talk, which sucks because tonight she is just so prone to saying things that just get to him — just get deep into his core and make his heart throb. And she’s actually been saying stuff that has been making him feel better, almost to the point where he actually feels _okay_ and _optimistic._ Like, when she talks, he feels like everything might just turn out okay.

He yanks down her pants with one shaking hand inside of her dark apartment. It trips her up because he’s simultaneously trying to get her to the fucking bed, but the waistband of her leggings and her panties are cinched around her thighs, restricting movement, and she lets out a muffled shriek as she loses some of her balance and has to grab onto him to stay upright.

He’s this mess of emotions as he presses kisses down the column of her neck and digs his fingers painfully into her fleshy ass, as he continues just _dragging_ her into the bedroom.

He shoves her shirt up after she collapses down onto the bed. Her breasts bounce free of her sports bra. He’s like, “The fuck,” about it because he thinks that she is the _fucking hottest_ _thing_ he has ever known. His mouth of full of thick saliva as he leans down and bites her breast — hard. She yelps out in pain. He soothes the bite with a lick. She’s salty. And he’s got one outstretched hand, rummaging loudly around in her nightstand for a condom.

Her shirt and bra are still pushed up to her neck. Her breasts are still exposed. Her lips are puffy. Her eyes are unfocused and yet, also shiny and bright as she dully watches him unbutton his pants and take down the zipper. He pushes down his underwear, trying to hide a wince.

Putting on the condom seriously like — fucking _burns._ And he’s trying to hide the pain and trying to pretend it doesn’t hurt like it does because he’s assuming that if she notices, she will stop this from happening.

She can see through his efforts. She says, “Grey, I don’t know if this is a good idea —”

He says, “Babe, just let me try.” He groans in pain as he finishes rolling the condom on. He recites off this cliche that he never ever fucking means. He says, “It never hurts to try.” He pulls at her leggings, only extracting one leg so that it is clear to get in there. He plants one hand on the mattress as the other hand reaches in between their bodies. He says, “Yeah? You wanna try? Do you want to do this?”

She hesitates. And then she softly says, “Yeah, of course I want to do this, but I don’t want it to hurt —” She cuts off her sentence with a whimper, as she feels him position himself at her entrance, nudging inside just the barest bit.

He pushes himself into her in one smooth stroke. She vocally grunts out this moan — which would sound _great_ — if he wasn’t just doubled over, trying not to vomit, trying to to scream, trying to focus a little bit less on the _searing pain_ at the tip of his penis. His erection is dying — _so fast._ He breathes through it. Through the blood in his ears, he can hear her talking to him. He can kind of feel in her hands frantically running over his back. He manages to weakly say, “I’m okay,” trying to allay her concerns. He is totally not okay. And it is obvious.

She scoots herself up and disconnects them. His entire body is throbbing hotly — not at all in a good way. He hears her say, “Oh my God, baby,” as she pushes him and tries to get him to lie down on the bed as he recovers.

 

 

  
It takes him long moments to get over it. When he does, he is so annoyed and so pissed at himself. He expels out a loud breath, and he shakes his head. He feels her hand touching his face. He sighs and says, “Was that as good for you as it was for me?”

She laughs. Her laugh is sweet and appreciative and feminine. She pulls him to her in a hug, careful not to touch his poor penis, and she presses kisses into the side of his sweaty face. She says, “You are a champ. You really went for it. You tried so hard!”

“Yeah, no one can say I’m not a trier,” he mutters. He sighs again. And then he starts to allow himself a smile. “That was really dumb. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It was flattering,” she says. “It was sexy. It was adorable.”

She’s stopping herself from telling him that she loves him — that she is so hopelessly in love with him, and it’s these moments that makes her fall even harder for him. She refrains from gushing this out because she’s sure that he’s probably sick of hearing her constantly express how she feels about him.

“I’m going to definitely talk to my doctor about this when I see him,” he vows. His eyes are shut because he is just _sick of this shit._ He says, “I’m sick of this shit. This shit can’t be normal. I’m going to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Might as fucking well get laid a few more times before I die. I don’t want to die without having sex with you at least three more times.”

“Oh my God,” she mutters. “First, stop saying you’re going to die all casually like that. You’re not. Second of all — three is a really specific number?”

 

 

  
This night isn’t really going great, in his opinion. He had these grand plans to fuck the shit out of her. But instead, he didn’t fuck the shit out of her at all. They are actually hanging out in her bathroom because the lights are brighter. She’s carefully cleaning his penis and holding him in her hand as they both quietly try to figure out if it actually looks _worse_ than it did in the morning. It looks reddish and angry and raw. But that is his fault, for trying to fuck with it when it’s not ready to.

She’s carefully applying antibiotic ointment. She’s all concentration and careful hands, poking around down there. It is really intimate. He kind of wonders how the hell she’s going to find it within herself to have sex with him again, after she has witnessed and examined him in this really vulnerable and pathetic state. He’s sitting on the edge of her bathtub with his shirt still on and no pants. She’s dressed and sitting on the floor with her first aid bag open, with its contents spilled out. Her face is inches away from his sad penis, and he realizes he is a fucking sad clown.

He says, “What if I never heal? What if it gets infected, and then it just shrivels up into blackness and falls off?”

She rolls her eyes at him as she continues carefully applying ointment to his skin. She says, “I’m going to just stop responding to your stupidass melodramatic questions.”

He presses on. He says, “What if we can’t have sex like that anymore? Like, Missandei, this is like some Flowers for Algernon shit. I started out with a shitty, soft, and weak body and a penis that didn’t fucking work. I underwent a procedure that resulted in a hot body and a penis that did work. But all good things come to an end and I’m reverting back to a shitty, soft body and a penis that _doesn’t fucking work._ The difference is that now, I have the additional pain of knowing what it feels like when stuff was good. Ignorance was bliss and all of that.”

“You are just full of cliches tonight,” she mumbles, finally deciding that she’s done readying his penis for bed. She rolls the cap of her ointment tube back on and says, “Were you also full of cliches before the surgery that apparently made you hot?”

 

 

  
He pulls on his underwear — he feels kind of ridiculous and really juvenile in tight briefs — but it’s really the most comfortable way for his package to be supported. She’s lying down in bed and watching him — he catches her watching him. And then he makes a V with his hands and frames his junk. He asks, “I look like an eight year old boy. Are you attracted to this _or what?_ Do you wanna fuck this _or what?”_

She delicately wrinkles up her nose. She has to stop herself from laughing. Because he is the fucking cutest. Instead, she says, “That was really . . . pedophillic. And yeah, I do want to hit that.”

 

 

  
In bed, he reaches out, plants his hand over her hip, and then uses his strength to slide her entire body so that it rests against his. She feels him kiss her bare shoulder.

For some reason, this makes her tear up. The lights are off and it’s dark, so he doesn’t see her cry. She blinks rapidly, clearing her eyes before she rolls over to snuggle into his chest. She quietly repeats the same thing that she’s been saying and feeling for long years. She’s kind of resigned to this. She says, “I love you.”

“Thanks.” And then he pauses. And then he hums and exhales. He says, “I’m so fucking lame. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m just . . . so difficult.”

“I don’t expect for you to say it back. You just — you can go at your own pace. I just say it because I feel it — and I just want to say it. It’s okay to respond with thank you.”

“Okay,” he says softly. He sighs again. “Okay.”

 

 

  
He’s still exhausted — but happy — when he wakes up the next morning. They stayed up entirely way too late messing around with his busted dick — a fact that they actually apologize to each other for. She tells him she’s sorry that she kept him up so late. He tells her that he’s sorry, too — for the same exact thing.

He pulls her into the shower with him. His mood is light and it’s fun. He teases her, and he keeps telling her to please keep her hands to herself. He reminds her that he currently cannot do nothing sexy with her. She points out that he can still go down on her. Like, oral is still an option.

That makes him laugh loudly — the sound of it echoing in the bathroom. He teases her, and he says to her, “Are you asking me something? Do you want to be clearer? Do you want to be more explicit?”

She actually wasn’t asking. She was just commenting. The fact that he catches her a little off guard makes her blush, and it also makes her awkwardly squirm. She says, “No, I wasn’t like — being coy. I wasn’t like, soliciting anything. I was just . . . you know. Just sayin’.”

“Just sayin’,” he slowly repeats as he lathers up soap in his hands, as water droplets splash all over his face, as he liberally and enthusiastically rubs those hands up down her slippery body. “Okay.”

She laughs nervously — because she’s getting turned on with the rubbing — and she’s laughing nervously because she can see that he’s also having a bodily response to this.

She hears him quietly mutter, “Oh my God,” as he firmly squeezes her soapy breast. “Oh my God — I really need to see my doctor.”

 

 

  
After their sexually frustrating shower, she starts smearing a new layer of antibiotic on him. He’s self-conscious because it’s like, daytime now, so he tries to take the tube away from her so he can do it himself. She insists on doing it because she has a better view of everything. Plus, she just wants to take care of him.

The statement makes him feel awkward. So he ignores it. Instead, he says, “Do you want to stop off for coffee before work? We have time.”

 

 

  
As Drogo predicted, Grey and Missandei are in fantastic moods today. Missy cannot wipe the dopey grin off of her face — she is talking to everyone with such joy and enthusiasm. Grey keeps having to fight to suppress his smiles — he keeps skirting on the edge of smiling for no reason. Jojen and Pyp are weirded out by it and feel uncomfortable in ways they do not have the self-awareness to completely understand. They are tiptoeing around Grey. They are blushing around Missandei because she is so . . . effusive and being super pretty. Osha, Jaime, and Drogo have gone through all of this before, so they shrug it off and just work — or at least Jaime pretends to. They are still not sure when Jaime is actually supposed to officially start doing whatever it is that he’s supposed to do. Yoren is benignly observant and notes to himself that he really needs to change his impression of his boss — like, Grey can apparently really get down. Lommy is completely oblivious and happy in oblivion.

Meera is kind of losing her mind. She witnesses Missy pressing her hand briefly in between Grey’s shoulder blades as she passes him to get out of the door of the office, on the way to the toilets. Meera spends the entire morning just wanting to clasp her hands together and push rainbows and hearts out of her eyes. She keeps sighing dreamily because this shit is like, goals.

 

 

 

 


	15. Renly is here!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In spite of his best efforts, Grey finds himself falling for Missy. Bummer.

 

 

 

  
Jojen, Pyp, Meera, and Lommy are embroiled in a pretty epic IM argument about who the most formidable Batman villain is. Lommy thinks it’s the Joker, and Pyp and Jojen are deriding Lommy for being such a basic ass bitch who poops cliches out of his butt.

Jojen actually also thinks that Batman’s greatest foil is the Joker, but not for the stupid reason that Lommy does. Jojen has this theory that the Joker is the id to Batman’s superego. Like, Jojen ideas are actually informed and well thought out.

Lommy just thinks it’s the Joker because the Joker is kickass.

Pyp is typing ferociously. He is saying what the fuck. He is telling Lommy that the Joker is a psychopathic serial killer. That is not “kickass.”

Meera is making an argument for Catwoman — which elicits audible groans from the guys, because it’s so classically Meera that there is nothing left to say.

Lommy astutely and obtusely says that Meera feels the way she does because she’s a “feminist.” He put it in quotes. And he’s actually joking around, but it predictably results in her getting a little bit nutty on IM and ranting on and on about Catwoman and how if any of them actually met Catwoman IRL, they would all shit their pants because they are wussy, wussy little boys.

Her typing is so aggressive and so punctuated that Drogo actually stops to try to peep at Pyp’s computer screen — because that is the nearest computer screen — and Pyp automatically freaks out and starts covering it up with his hands. He squeaks out, “Whaaat! Stoppp! Nothing!”

Pyp is not really known for his cool.

Drogo rolls his eyes because it’s ridiculous that the staff thinks he gives a shit about their nerd debates. He asks, “What are you dorks fighting about now?”

Jaime’s interest gets piqued. The office has been pretty quiet. He doesn’t yet realize that the junior staff talks constantly to each other — but that they do most of their chatting over IM. Jaime is a beautiful-looking white male with shiny blond hair, devoid of dork interests, so of course he’s confused and delicately asking, “Who’s fighting who?”

“We’re not fighting,” Lommy says patiently. “We’re just talking about who the baddest Batman villain is.”

“Ah,” Drogo says, already moving on with his day. “My vote is for Dr. Octopus. That movie was fun.” Drogo is an action movie junkie. While he does not and has not read any comic books, he has seen ninety-nine percent of comic book movies. He is trolling them. Pretty obviously.

And Pyp falls for it. Pyp’s jaw drops and he looks apoplectic before he says, “Drogo! Oh my _God!_ They’re not even in the same universe, _dude!”_

“Hey!” Grey suddenly shouts, sticking his head out past his office door. He looks completely irritated. He has his headset on. He points to it. Everyone wonders if he has even muted his mic. His words run together as he aggressively says, “Shut the fuck up I’m on a call!”

 

 

  
Over the phone, Grey tells her to hold on for sec — and she does, waiting patiently and casting a glance at Renly before Grey suddenly shouts into her ear. Yara has to pull her phone away from her face as Grey shouts to his staff to shut the fuck up.

Renly can hear it, even though Grey’s not on speakerphone. Renly chuckles as he rubs the stubble on his chin. He mutters, “I remember him being a little bit more soft-spoken.”

“That was before he let power go to his head,” Yara says, not missing a beat. She’s raising her arm to wave down a cab for them. Into the phone, she says, “Yeah, I’m talking about _you.”_

 

 

Most of them spend the rest of the day at a stage downtown, testing the steadicam and handheld rigs. Meera shadows Missy and Yoren closely as they finalize the visual build. Jojen and Lommy follow Drogo around attentively as he talks to props and lighting.

Grey is off by himself, talking with makeup and costume, taking test shots of dancers in costume. Grey’s focus is narrow and discerning as he talks softly with the lead makeup artist. He’s expressing concerned with the opacity of the body makeup under light. He walks over, grabs a light, tilts the chin of a dancer away so that she doesn’t get blinded — and then he blasts a beam on her collarbone and cleavage. He points out some tone variations to the makeup artist, who is pushing back a little bit and suggesting that some of it can be fixed in post-production. He tells her he’d rather not have to fix so much in post.

From across the room, it just looks like Grey is shining a light on a woman’s boobs — it looks like he’s constantly gesturing to the boobs and talking about the boobs. The junior staffers are wide-eyed and stunned by all of the gorgeous and scantily clad women walking around them. They cannot rip their eyes from Grey’s close proximity to the pretty woman’s breasts.

“Oh my God,” Jojen mutters under his breath to Lommy. “Gangsta.”

 

 

  
Renly, while exhausted from a breakneck work schedule and a cross-country flight, still pushes out some pep as he walks up to some old friends with his arms spread out wide. He takes up a lot of time hugging people he knows and shaking hands with everyone that he doesn’t know. Jojen and Lommy are kind of awestruck. They are awestruck not only because Renly is kind of a rockstar, but because Renly is _so friendly._ It is totally bizarre that someone so nice in a pure way is actually friends with Grey and Drogo.

“Great to meet you,” Renly says to Meera, shaking her hand with both of his. And then he kind of pauses when he gets to Missandei. He narrows his eyes — it’s playful but Meera is confused for a second — and he says, “Do I know you?”

Missy gives him a half-smile — she’s kind of bashful. She says, “How many times does a person have to apologize to you for missing your wedding? I sent you glassware, didn’t I?” She assumes that he’s just being polite. They actually do not know each other that well. They’ve worked together a couple of times. In particular, they bonded in Mantarys, when he was trying not to barf on the Demon Road train and she was coaching him through that. She heard through the grapevine that there were hundreds of people at his wedding, and she was not missed.

“We love the wine glasses,” Renly says, conceding. “Still — would’ve preferred to have your presence.”

“I know. I am bummed to have missed it, too.”

While she really _did_ have to work on his wedding date, the real reason she didn’t go was she was still dying inside from heartbreak.

“Well, water under the bridge,” Renly says. He opens his arms out to Missandei for a hug, which she faithfully walks into.

 

 

  
Grey walks up to them, his face devoid of expression. When he’s in work mode, nothing can faze him. The ceiling can spontaneously cave in because of a natural disaster, and his first inclination would be to grab a camera and start filming everything.

As he arrives, he plainly says, “She’s figuring it out.” He’s referring to the makeup artist and the outcome of their long discussion.

“Nice!” Renly says, reaching out to squeeze Grey’s shoulder kindly. “You’ve always had such a great manner with people.”

“Hm,” Missy says. “I’m not sure many others hold this opinion about him.”

Grey’s eyes shift to her face. He says, “I’m actually really nice and easy to get along with. Ask anyone. Meera?”

Meera freezes, stunned that she is suddenly pulled into this conversation. Carefully, because Grey is her big boss, she nods and eagerly says, “Sure. Yes.” It’s true enough. He’s very fair and a very clear communicator.

Missandei gives Grey a half-smile. “She’s just saying that so you don’t have an emotional outburst and fire her,” she says. “Again.”

He rolls his eyes. He says, “Christ. You fire someone for a day _one time_ and people just don’t let you live it down.” He’s got his arms crossed, and he actually sounds authentically cranky.

Renly has no idea what the hell is going on. At one point, he did casually learn from Brienne that Grey and Missy dated, but then he promptly forgot that information because the relationship was brief and never in his face because he lives so far away. For this reason, he does not understand what this schtick is about at all.

 

 

  
Toward the end of the day, Missy applies some major willpower as she avoids the hot and crispy panini sandwiches in favor of mowing down some chunks of cantaloupe at craft services to stave off hunger. Her cheeks are painfully full as Grey walks up to her — and when he gets a peek at her face, he laughs a little bit.

“I’m pretending I’m eating hot cheesy carbs,” she says, voice muffled as she tries to chew.

“How’s that working out for you?”

She shakes her head. “Not very well.” She groans. “God, it smells so good.” She dips her face toward a hot tray full of sandwiches.

He watches this and he’s thinking that she is so fucking cute. He’s thinking that she is so hilarious in just the perfect way — not in a corny or cutesy way, but kind of mean and sharp and clever. He’s thinking that she is so fucking smart in the most efficient way, in a quiet way that she doesn’t flaunt. She fucking knows a gazillion languages, and rather than shoving that skill into people’s faces constantly, the way she interprets or smooths over misunderstandings is so smooth and so thoughtful and _smart._ He doesn’t even have to think as hard when she is around. He can literally just hand over everything to her and not worry about any of it. She challenges him in all of the necessary ways and just makes him want to be better. She’s just so good and so inspirational and so fucking perfect. It’s going to be so fucking sad for them if he is dying.

“I gotta stay here late,” he says.

“Okay,” she says, before tilting her head back to guzzle half a bottle of water. “Are you about to ask me to work late, too?”

He shakes his head. “No, actually. No need for you to stay late. But was wondering about later.”

She scrunches up her face. “Later?” She is not picking up what he is subtly trying to ask, because he typically never talks about them when they are working.

He crosses his arms and then lowers his voice so that she can barely hear him, let alone anyone else. He quietly asks, “Can I see you later?”

Her expression just melts. It softens right in front of him. She actually starts to tear up a little bit — probably because she is thinking about his impending death again — and he’s tempted to grab her shoulders, shake her, and tell her to fucking stop it. Jesus Christ, he’s just asking her if he can come over later. They have this exchange like, seriously, all the fucking time.

He refrains from pushing his defensive brand of aggression at her. Instead, he just mildly and quietly says, “Missandei. You can’t cry like this in public all the time. Because it makes me look bad. It makes me look like I’m being verbally abusive to you.”

She suddenly pitches forward due to the force of her surprised laugh. She discreetly raises up her knuckles to swipe away some escaping tears from under her eyes.

“There you go,” he says, basically stopping himself from reaching out to touch her. “This looks better. Now it just looks like I’m being hilarious and cracking you up with my zingers.”

“Babe,” she says softly.

She’s about to say something gushy and totally inappropriate for work, so he cuts her off and says, “So that’s a yes? We’ll connect later?”

She sniffs loudly and then her voice drops half an octave. She says, “Oh my God, you need to stop sexually harassing me. We’re at work, and you’re my boss.”

“What?”

 _“Connect_ later?” she says, quoting him back to himself, in the hopes that he clearly hears the sexual innuendo and is inspired by it. “Come on, man. That’s _flagrant.”_

He’s shaking his head and keeping his arms crossed. He’s trying not to laugh. He’s trying not to build on this right now. He’s trying to get his focus back on work. He’s allowing himself to firmly say, “Missandei.”

She’s chuckling silently, her shoulders hopping up and down. She says, “Will you be hungry later? I can cobble up some dinner for you.”

“Whoa.” He’s saying this because it’s been years since she’s made him any food.

“So that’s a yes?”

 

 

  
Everyone gets to go home except for the camera guys and director. So everyone except for Jojen, Lommy, Grey, and obviously, Drogo and Renly. Drogo is the lead on this shoot because it’s more his aesthetic than it is Grey’s.

Drogo makes a big show of relinquishing Meera, Yara, Yoren, and Missy.

Meera makes the observation that the women — and Yoren — get to go home because they are relatively unimportant. Drogo doesn’t fall for the trap. He just tells them, “Get the fuck going, babes. And Yoren. Enjoy your night.”

 

 

  
Missy ends up driving Meera home because no one besides Meera feels especially comfortable letting Meera take the train home by herself now that it is dark. Missy understands she’s being a hypocrite, taking a woman’s agency away from her, but she’s okay with it in this case. She just wants to give Meera a ride home.

It’s the first time Meera’s been in Missy car. Meera says, “Oh, your car is so clean!” as she buckles up.

Over the course of the drive, they talk a lot about work. And then they talk a little bit about TV. And then Meera randomly asks Missy who Missy thinks is Batman’s greatest adversary. Missy tells Meera that she just doesn’t care to weigh in on this debate. Meera tells Missy that she’s going to tell the guys that Missy says it’s Catwoman, just to get more votes. Missandei is okay with this.

 

 

  
They work for four more hours, physically running through the shoot from start to finish, marking and smoothing over hiccups, making small iterative adjustments. Drogo is in his element — tired and exhausted from long days, but also cheerful and keeping the energy level high for all of them. Renly is largely the same — exhausted, but pushing out a lot of cheer. Their kindness keeps Jojen and Lommy in good spirits, and the two of them actually gladly run through the shoot, over and over again.

This actually makes Grey wonder if his brand of quiet grit, disapproval, and leading by example is even fucking effective. Grey is watching Lommy hustle harder than he can remember Lommy ever hustling — and Grey is shocked. He is wondering if he even brings out the best in people or if he actually unwittingly crushes them and prevents them from doing good work.

Grey makes a mental note to talk this over with Missandei later. He also discreetly pulls his phone out of his pocket to send her a quick message. He’s telling her he’s still fucking working.

 

 

  
Drogo finally calls it a day around nine o’clock. When he tells them that they might as well be done for now, Jojen comically — and carefully because he has a rig strapped to his body — collapses down onto the floor.

Renly chuckles, looking down at Jojen. He says, “You guys are so awesome. You guys are troopers. I really, really appreciate your dedication and expertise!”

Honestly, Jojen has been slightly creeped out by how nice Renly is. He thinks that Renly is really cool and really smart — but he’s not Grey. Jojen learns much faster with Grey. Grey doesn’t decorate language. Grey just bluntly tells them how to be better — and that is what Jojen wants. He wants to get better.

Lommy loves Renly though. Because Lommy thrives with positive reinforcement.

“I know it’s late, but if you guys don’t have plans, I’d love to take you out to a late dinner as thanks,” Renly says. “Maybe a steak dinner because there’s that steakhouse around the corner. Do you guys eat meat?”

“Oh, we eat steak!” Lommy says enthusiastically. “I’m in!”

“Man, that’s real generous,” Drogo says. “I have nothing going on tonight, and I’m famished. I’m down.”

“Yeah! Let’s do it!” Jojen says, from the dirty floor.

Grey is hesitating. Real hard. He says, “Um,” and uncomfortably shifts his weight back and forth on his feet.

Renly knows that Grey eats meat, so Renly asks, “You don’t feel like steak?”

“Um, I actually have plans.”

Renly looks surprised. He says, “Oh.” And then he says, “Oh! Have we been keeping you from your plans? You should’ve said something! We could’ve let you go maybe an hour ago!”

“It’s cool,” Grey says vaguely. He can tell that he is being really fucking weird. He just cannot help it. “I was happy to stay.”

“No, you should’ve said something!”

Drogo chuckles warmly. He decides to bail Grey out a little bit — as well as out him a little bit. Drogo says, “Your woman gets it, though. Missy gets the nature of the work.”

“Oh!” Renly says — as the pieces click into place in his brain. “Oh! Of course! You and Missy! Are together! Of course! That’s great! Oh!” He’s currently working through his surprise. “Well, why don’t we invite her? Does she eat meat?”

“She does,” Grey says reluctantly. “Um, but we already have dinner plans. She and I do, I mean.” He feels like a real tool bag. He feels like he’s just telling all of them his fucking business and it’s none of _their_ business. It just feels really awkward and terrible, and it makes him feel vulnerable.

“Oh,” Renly says. “Okay! Cool!”

“Sorry,” Grey mutters. “I would cancel on her, but she’s got like — dinner going — so, I feel like — I probably shouldn’t cancel on her.”

Renly laughs and then reaches out to playfully swat at Grey. He says, “Don’t be sorry! And definitely do not cancel on her. And when you see her — definitely blame me for the late dinner hour. Totally my fault.”

The fact that Renly is the nicest motherfucker on the planet manages to make Grey experience even deeper depths of lame-assery.

 

 

  
They all trade a lot of personal information at dinner. Jojen and Lommy learn that Renly is gay, for instance, because he refers to his husband. And because Renly doesn’t telegraph stereotypical gayness, this trips up Lommy for a freak second. Lommy awkwardly announces that his aunt is gay to the table — and then immediately regrets letting that come out of his mouth. Renly kindly laughs at that and starts asking Lommy questions about his aunt and family.

Jojen and Lommy learn that Drogo actually has a long term girlfriend — he’s actually in a monogamous relationship. They also find out who she is and are awed that she’s a fucking celebrity. Renly guffaws loudly, slapping his hand on the table and incredulously saying, “No way! Dany!”

Drogo is rubbing the back of his neck and sheepishly saying, “I know. I know, man. We are both very ashamed and embarrassed about this — and each other.”

“No, I think it’s great! Oh my God, you guys must be so photogenic together!”

 

 

  
Jojen and Lommy basically take a backseat to the conversation as two old friends catch up together and occasionally drop some inside jokes that Jojen and Lommy do not understand.

Drogo gives Renly all of the latest gossip. Renly is complaining that nobody tells him anything. He tells Drogo that Brienne is really terrible at remembering all of the salacious details.

Drogo tells Renly that Hodor’s wife wants him to retire and/or find a more stable job, but Hodor is worried about money and putting all of their kids through college. Hodor’s wife is a stay-at-home mom — and whenever Drogo talks to Hodor, he asks Hodor why his wife just doesn’t just go back to work. Then Hodor can get a stable job in King’s Landing and not travel all the time — and the money thing won’t be as much of an issue. Drogo tells Renly he’s only getting a one-sided account of things, and Hodor cannot explain why his wife will not get a job. But they’ve been working through that.

Drogo guesses that Renly already knows all the details about Jaime and Brienne — which is accurate — so Drogo skips over them. He does tell Renly that Grey and Jaime have been having tensions — because Grey basically will not let Jaime do his job. Drogo is kind of tired of being in the middle of that.

Drogo tells Renly that Yara’s love life is a total mess. Just a total mess. And he hopes that she just stays true to herself and says fuck you to all of the haters, because she is great and people sometimes just don’t fucking understand that not everyone wants to shack up and be conventional. But yeah, she seems like she’s going through some hard shit.

Drogo doesn’t tell Renly that Grey might be sick — because they are not that close. Instead, he tells Renly that Grey and Missy seem to be doing good. They seem really happy together. The only downside to it all is that Grey cannot fucking hang out with Drogo because Grey is always hanging out with Missy. Like, tonight was a great example. Drogo was really excited at the prospect of having dinner with Renly together and just catching the fuck up. But Grey couldn’t come because he’s off with Missy doing relationship shit. Drogo is super happy for them — but come on.

Renly is laughing. Because Drogo is really self-centered. Renly’s saying, “I see. That’s rough, Drogo. I remember that you guys were inseparable, back in the day.”

“We’re best friends,” Drogo says gravely.

“Yeah, that’s special. You should talk to him. Tell him you want to spend more time together.”

“What? Like a fucking woman?”

Renly blinks. And then he says, “Yes. Sure. Actually no. I don’t like casual sexism.”

“It’s a joke, Ren,” Drogo says. “See, this is why I miss Grey. He gets my sexism, and he thinks it’s hilarious. Anyway — he and I have actually talked about this. And for now, I just wanna give him space to be with Missy because their relationship is still pretty new. But I’m sure that later on, once they are sick of each other, he’ll come running back to his number one. That’s me. I’m his number one.”

“Hey, can I interrupt?” Jojen asks, even raising his hand. “I gotta ask — ‘cause we’ve all been wondering — but what’s the deal with Grey? Why is he your BFF, and why is Missy dating him?”

“Um, ‘cause he’s _awesome!”_ Drogo snaps.

“So, he’s like, fun outside of work?”

 

 

  
When she opens her door, he gets hit in the face with yummy smells. He immediately wraps her up in a hug, shuts the door with his foot, and walks her backward into her apartment. He quietly groans as her body presses into his — she’s laughing as she hangs onto him — and he says, “You feel _so good_. It smells _amazing_ in here. Goddamn, I’ve had a long day.” He presses his face into her cheek and starts pressing kisses into her skin.

She feels delirious and drunk on him. She shuts her eyes and presses her palms deeper into his shoulder blades. She giggles when his kisses drift to her neck, because it tickles.

He mumbles, “I’m sorry you had to keep reheating dinner. I’m so sorry you had to wait for me. My fault. I was being a stupid chickenshit.”

“It’s fine,” she says quietly. “I love waiting for you.”

“Oh my God, you’re so fucking weird,” he says into her neck. “You’re lucky I like it.”

She grasps tighter onto his body. She says, “I love this. I love you coming home to dinner. I love everything about this.”

He pulls his face away from her neck to look at her face. He stares at her intently as he says, “Me too.”

She looks stunned for a moment. And then she stutters out a laugh — it’s just tension release. And then she says, “Okay, good enough — I’ll take it,” before she raises her face so that she can kiss him on the lips.

 

 

 

 


	16. Why are Renly's friends jerks?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody films a music video! Renly likes to run a happy ship full of positivity. He wonders why his friends are all d-bags, tho.

 

 

His phone buzzes with a text message as he’s in the middle of sex, as he’s in the midst of going down on her. He vaguely hears it from where it’s stationed on her side table, and he forgets about it right after he registers it. He just digs his fingers deeper into her sweaty skin, into her pliant ass. He pulls her up closer to his mouth. He sees her arch her back instinctively in response. He hears her grind out another low and sexy groan. It is fucking everything to him.

His emotions are so abstract and nonsensical right now. He just feels want and need and a general sense of fulfillment. He feels drugged and cloudy and slow.

There’s something inevitable about how he feels about her. There’s something cyclical and familiar about it. He’s lived a version of this life before.

A dark thought breaks into his consciousness, in the middle of all of the sex-inspired happiness. There’s a part of his brain that is wondering if he’s always meant to get broken by her just as he always seems fated to fall for her, over and over again.

 

 

  
After she comes, he crawls back up the bed, clasps their hands together over her head, and he carefully and slowly sinks his body on top of hers. He holds the top of her head in his other hand as he makes out with her for long minutes. They don’t talk, and the only sound coming out of them are the soft, wet suction sounds of their mouths colliding and retreating.

He thinks that this is probably what life is all about. It is just eating and fucking and sleeping and making cool shit and kissing.

She runs one free hand all over his body, up and down his back, pressing his skin into his spine. She kneads his muscles as she kisses him back, as she tastes his spit and her own body in his mouth — and she feels so close to him right now.

 

 

  
He doesn’t remember to look at his phone until Missandei gets up from the bed to use the toilet and get her hair and teeth ready for bed. He rolls over and pulls the sheets with his twisting body. He swipes up his device and presses his finger to the reader, unlocking it. The phone glows and he sees right away that Yara texted him.

She wanted to know if he was up — if he was awake.

He feels his stomach drop. He checks the time stamp and the message came in forty minutes ago. He sits up straighter, and he starts clicking out a response to her. First, he apologizes and says that he’s sorry for missing her text when it came in. In turn, he asks her if _she_ is still awake and if she wants to talk or something.

He waits all of three seconds before he starts calling her. They have fallen into a routine when it comes to this. Sometimes she reaches out to him from out of nowhere, and he tries to not make her feel self-conscious about it. She has told him he does a good job at this, because that is the reason she keeps reaching out to him.

When she picks up, she sounds groggy — like he woke up her. Her voice is soft and quiet and questioning. She’s actually asking him if he’s alright.

“Um, I’m fine. Sorry I woke you up. Are you okay? Why did you text earlier?”

It takes her a beat to remember. In that time, Missandei walks out of the bathroom, wearing one of his t-shirts, and she watches him silently from the doorway. He looks at Missandei’s face and gives her a quick smile as Yara talks into his ear and tells him she was just bored and wondering what he was up to, if he wanted to shoot the shit a little bit before bed.

She typically cloaks her emotional language in mundanity. She typically calls him up to tell him that she’s bored and would like for him to entertain her. She typically does this to get some distraction from whatever is actually bothering her.

He sighs. He says, “Sorry, man. Sorry I wasn’t around.”

Yara laughs in his ear. She’s telling him it’s not even a big deal. She obviously managed. She was actually sleeping pretty soundly before he interrupted it.

He is having a hard time reading her over the line. He typically is not that great at understanding people — but when it comes to Yara, he feels inordinately bad about his lack of talent in this area.

He says, “Okay, I’ll let you get back to it.”

She tells him goodnight.

 

 

  
Missy has done a really good job of suppressing substantive conversation topics because he told her he was sick of talking about heavy stuff — and her efforts have resulted in quite the boon to their relationship. He is happy, fun, cheerful even, and super affectionate.

So she feels reluctance as she pushes herself off the door jamb and crawls back into bed with him. She feels reluctance because she’s about to fucking ruin all of the sexy fun times for them. She says, “Who were you talking to?” In her head, she has three guesses: Drogo, Dany, or Yara.

He says, “Yara.”

“Oh,” she says, dropping herself into the space next to him. “It’s actually really cute, how you talk to her.”

“Yeah?” He currently sounds a little despondent and not all that interested.

“Yeah, your voice was soft and gentle. And you casually apologized a lot.”

 

 

  
She asks him if he wants to talk about how he is feeling. He sighs and initially tells her that there’s not really anything to talk about. Yara texted him while they were having sex. He missed it because they were having sex and he was all wrapped up in it — all wrapped up in her. And for some reason, he feels like shit over it even though he knows that he is allowed to have sex and people don’t always answer text messages right away. He shrugs and then rolls over to click off the light on her nightstand. It’s already midnight.

There’s still so much distance that they need to cover. This is what Missandei is thinking as she lies next to his warm and now tense body. She places a hand on her stomach and deeply inhales. She opts to skip all of these comments that she can make about his language — the words he has chosen to use. Instead, she decides to play it honest and yet make it all about her.

She says, “You know, it’s kind of weird for me that Yara calls you, and she texts you — when she’s having a rough night.”

This direction surprises him. He says, “Really?”

“Yeah, I think I’m a little jealous about it,” she says, staring up at the dark ceiling. And all of the things she is about to say are true. She says, “She was my friend first, to be honest. We used to hang out all the time. It used to be us and Brienne — the women — against all of you hyper masculine dudes — and maybe here I actually mean just Drogo. But Yara and I were a real unit. And then I left. Life went on without me. And then I came back. And nothing is the same. Yara is calling you and texting you. Drogo and you are even closer, which I did not think was even possible. Everyone likes you more than they like me, even Dany. I’m basically the thing that gets in the way of all of your other relationships. Is that why you feel bad? Because you can’t be with them because you’re with me?”

 

 

  
After her little confession, he rolls over and presses his mouth against hers. His hands are pressed to her cheeks. He kisses her in gratitude — short, repetitive little pecks in between her giggles. She’s softly asking him if it turns him on that she’s a weird, friendless little loser.

Her little speech made him feel better — he cannot quite tell how deliberate and benignly manipulative it was — if she exaggerated a little bit to make him feel relief and to make it clear to him that she understands what’s in his head and his worries — but it does not matter. It landed well.

“There’s just never enough time,” he tells her quietly.

“No, there’s not,” she says.

“I don’t want to lose myself,” he says.

“You won’t.”

“I don’t want to lose myself in you,” he says, just trying it out, just seeing how it feels to say the words out loud to her.

“Yeah you do,” she says confidently. “You want to lose a little bit of yourself in me. But you’re just scared.”

“Is this going to work this time?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, without hesitation.

“You don’t know that.”

“I _believe_ it.”

 

 

  
He starts scrambling a little bit in the morning because he stayed up so late, he’s not in his own apartment, and also because he sometimes likes to find reasons to freak out even though his life is pretty comfortable and steady.

He wakes up with a jolt, jarring her awake at the same time. She groans and reaches out for him, but he pulls himself out of her grasp and tells her he needs to shower. Her eyes are closed, she’s sleepily burrowing her face deeper into her pillow, mutters that he’s on his own. She’s going to sleep for as long as possible.

 

 

  
She grabs onto his wrists as his hands frame her face, as he tilts her eyes up so that they are looking back at him. Her blunt fingernails bite into his skin as she squeezes her hands and presses her nose against his skin. She repeatedly tells him that she loves him and that he makes her feel so young sometimes. He makes her feel dumb and silly and haphazard sometimes. She moans as he suddenly moves his face and starts kissing her in the car, in the garage, underneath her apartment building.

In between his kisses, she whispers, “You make me make decisions with my gut and not my head.”

He shakes his head slowly — whether to signal disagreement or disbelief — it does not even matter. He says, “We are in so much trouble.” Again, he means that it’s going to be so fucking painful for the both of them if he is dying. He also means that he was wrong about himself, that emotional numbness was really a safeguard against _this,_ and perhaps not at all his default. He says to her, “No one makes me feel the way you do.”

She elicits explicitness. She ask, “How do I make you feel?”

He says, “Like it’s easy, and like it’s all possible.”

 

 

  
They are verging on being a little late. It will take them a while to get through the front gate and then to get through security. He snaps her ID from her fingers, smashes it with his, and then he hands them over to the guard when they get to the location.

 

 

  
Missandei watches as Grey wordlessly walks away from her and toward Yara and Drogo. She opts not to follow. She opts to just be a real classy person, to continue giving up some of her stake on her own friends, to let them all excitedly start talking over each other. She watches as Yara lightly punches Grey in the shoulder. She watches as Grey pretends like it hurts — as he pulls his face into this mockery of pain. She watches as they both burst out laughing at the same time. She wonders — not at all for the first time — when this happened, how it happened, and if the space in people’s feelings is finite.

She doesn’t bother asking herself why it happened. She already knows. She knows that he is wonderful and that it is so easy to love him. She’s not the only one who knows this or feels this.

She’s about to turn around, turn her attention to work, but his manly shout breaks out and echoes in the cavernous space. She shoots her eyes back over to the three of them. Grey is doubled over and holding onto his stomach. He’s loudly saying, “Why! Yara! Why!” as Yara and Drogo crack up.

 

 

  
Drogo insisted on sharing credit with Grey for this shoot, so this is how Grey also gets stuck talking with the phone rep, their blog writer, and a few journalists. To be real, the only reason anyone cares about talking to them is due to Renly and the woman sitting next to them, Pia. She only goes by one name. She is a singer and celebrity.

Probably of everyone, Grey is the one that hates having a camera in his face the most. He largely is useless. He refrains from doing press unless he thinks it’s absolutely necessary, or if he thinks not doing so will be an obstacle in the growth of the studio. He utterly sucks at it. He just sits there as Pia answers questions about herself and also about why she decided to pair up with Google for this shoot. The real answer is money, but the expressed answer is that she is fascinated by the idea of love in the digital age — how people connect through their devices.

Renly and Drogo talk about the concept of the music video, and they also talk about the collaborative process and how rewarding it is. It is all quotable.

Grey’s piece of the whole thing comes up when a reporter asks about the cameras on the phones — the reporter comments that it’s so cool that this is such a big budget video filmed on camera phones only. Drogo laughs and gestures to Grey, saying that that stuff is Grey’s area.

Grey talks about the custom-built rigs that they had made for the phones. He talks about the proprietary software that they commissioned and worked with various stakeholders on for this shoot — but there were no hardware customizations. He gets lost between giving too much detail and also not giving enough detail. He’s also pretty sure that his segment of this interview will be cut, because it’s only of interest to the most hardcore of nerds.

 

 

  
Yara has her phone plastered to her hand the whole day. Half of the time, her phone is pressed to her ear and she’s in the middle of directing her stress overflow to something productive. She helps drag equipment from place to place, her athletic body expending physical effort as her mouth runs a mile a minute over the phone.

Missy is second fiddle to all of this — fairly eager and extremely motivated to help alleviate some of the burden on Yara. However, it’s been years since they’ve worked together. Certain things have been lost — such as their shorthand, such as the ability to read each other’s minds.

For the sake of efficiency, Yara just resorts to blunt directives, rolled out in quick succession. It sounds and feels hierarchical. Missy pushes down any ego she might have about it. There’s no job that is too small. She takes down the list, and then runs off to go talk to craft service about Pia’s dietary restrictions, which were in the rider, but which were not carried out — for some reason.

 

 

  
The day is very long and grueling — but nothing disastrous and hugely delaying happens. There is a moment when Renly pulls rank on Drogo for the sake of expediting a disagreement about lighting. The only people that it shakes are Jojen and Lommy. In their comparatively limited experience, they have only seen Grey take Drogo to task. To watch Renly not even drop his niceness as he reminds Drogo that Drogo does not have the final say — Renly does — was a trip to watch.

It honestly just pisses the fuck out of Drogo, but he puts up with it because he’s a professional and Renly is not wrong — and this is why hierarchies exist.

 

 

  
At the end of the day — they all feel like zombies. Missy’s eyes are sore from staring intently at a monitor for hours. The shells of her ears are aching from the headphones. She got very little sleep the night before. And she actually forgot that they are all due at Tyrion’s house for dinner. Yara has to remind her, when she hears Missy mutter that she’s so ready to go home and just pass out. Yara says, “Maybe you can sleep in the car?”

 

 

  
Drogo is over being legitimately mad at Renly, but he is sick of looking at all of their fucking faces. He’s cranky as he shoves his body into Missy’s car. He’s leaving his own car at the soundstage because they’re back there tomorrow anyway. Dany can drive him home. Grey can drive him to work. It will be like the good ol’ days. He has to wake up before eight in the morning anyway.

Missy’s sedan is tiny, and Drogo’s shoulders are wedged against Grey’s and Renly’s. Yara is sitting shotgun because someone — Renly — wanted to be chivalrous.

Drogo sighs loudly and wiggles around. He mutters, “Why is the biggest person, aka _me,_ shoved in the middle like this? Grey, why is your fat ass digging into me?”

Grey is tired and cranky, too. So he just doesn’t even bother with answering Drogo’s bitchy rhetorical questions. Instead, he throws back his own shitty rhetorical question. He asks, “Why don’t I just fucking throw myself out of this car and just _kill myself?”_

“Oh my _God,_ why you always escalating, man?”

“I guess I’m sensitive about my fucking fat ass.”

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite.”

“How am I a hypocrite?”

“You insult people’s fat asses all the time.” Drogo is obviously talking about Missandei’s butt, but he is trying somewhat to keep it anonymous and kind of classy.

“God, I say _one_ thing about _one_ ass _one_ time and then suddenly the story is that I insult all the fucking asses!”

Yara is tiredly smiling in her cushy front seat because her buds are idiots — and hilarious. Missy is now pretty secure in how Grey actually feels about her ass, so she’s not really stressing over this moronic argument.

Renly is getting anxiety though. He doesn’t understand why everyone is always _so mean_ to each other. He doesn’t understand this kind of humor at all. He and Brienne are just really nice to each other. That is his typical dynamic with his friends.

He thinks this squabbling is a real fight and not what it actually is — banter — so he’s trying to smooth things over as he says, “Sorry you’re uncomfortable, man. We should’ve been more thoughtful as we got into the car.” Renly then tries to give Drogo a little bit more space by pressing his side tighter to the door of the car.

This makes Drogo feel like a real tool, which makes him annoyed at Renly all over again — because Renly is making Drogo feel like a real tool. Honestly, nice people are sometimes the fucking worst.

 

 

  
Jaime, Brienne, and Dany arrive to dinner on time and are picking at an appetizer plate of dips and flatbreads when Missandei finally pulls into Tyrion’s long driveway. Drogo is pissed that Tyrion lives so fucking far away, all the fuck away in the suburbs. Grey is pissed that his back is aching and hurting — and maybe he fucking has bone cancer.

He almost closes the door in Drogo’s face because he assumes Drogo is getting out on Renly’s side.

Drogo catches the swinging door with the flat of his hand, and is miffed about it. He’s mad that the door was almost shut on his face. He snaps loudly at Grey — who doesn’t like being snapped at all. Drogo is like, “The fuck, man! Hello!”

Grey is like, “Why would you even get out on this side!” He means that this is the door facing away from the house.

“Because I’m obsessed with you!” Drogo shouts. “And I just want to stay close to you!” And then just like that, he starts laughing a little bit — his anger just dissipates.

Grey holds his hand out, helping to heave Drogo’s body out of the car.

 

 

  
Tyrion can hear their fighting from where he’s standing on his front stoop. Jaime has already primed Tyrion a little bit. Jaime has already told Tyrion that this is actually a terrible week to get together. Everyone in the entire office except for him are slammed.

Tyrion sees all of their faces. He touches Missandei’s hand as she quietly walks into his house. Yara ruffles his hair and he tries to punch that bitch for that, but she’s too fast. Renly looks pretty miserable. Drogo is a little sweaty. And Grey looks irritable, but not like he is dying.

 

 

 


End file.
